


Off the Deep End

by sarkywoman



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Body Horror, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 19:29:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5639287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkywoman/pseuds/sarkywoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haunted by the things he's done and the things that have been done to him, Rhys drifts dangerously in the aftermath of everything that happened and his best support comes from an unexpected source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There was no August/Rhys pairing tag. Wtf.

“And the whole thing just... just _collapsed_ beneath our feet!”

Gasps of shock and awe accompanied Fiona's announcement. She told the story as if it had happened just ten minutes ago, excitement still in her eyes as she gestured and searched for the perfect words to describe what she and Rhys had seen out in the Vault.

August grinned at the sight as he finished polishing a glass. The Vault of the Traveller wasn't even Fiona's most recent adventure worth talking about, but it seemed to be her favourite. It was a favourite with the groupies she accumulated too. Athena said the vault hunting business still had novelty for her and that was why she liked regaling people with her adventures so much. August didn't much care why she talked about it, only that it brought more people down to The Purple Skag to drink. Business slowed when she was away, peaking when Fiona was fresh back from a new trip.

“Was this last one a bust then?” He asked Rhys, who sat at the bar sighing into his whiskey. His fifth whiskey. August had been counting. “Fiona ain't said much about it.”

Rhys blinked up at him as if he didn't realise he was being spoken to at first. “Huh? Oh. Uh... She got some bits and pieces. Nothing mind-blowing.”

“What about you? Weren't you looking for something?”

Mr Ten Million Dollars had a tendency to drop in and out of their lives. It was never a surprise to see him, but he retreated off to some old Atlas place every once in a while to work on some technical shit that August couldn't be bothered about. Like the rest of them, Rhys kept an ear to the ground and let Fiona know whenever he had some good intel. When he did, he usually asked to tag along. She always let him. After the Vault of the Traveller there was something different about how Fiona and Rhys handled each other. August probably wouldn't have noticed it if Sasha hadn't pointed it out but now that he knew about it, it was easy enough to see. Something had gone down out there that never made it into Fiona's stories.

As for Rhys, he kept to himself more and more these days. Sasha said he was probably tired from all his work on the Atlas stuff, but August wasn't so sure. Rhys' attitude lately looked a lot like August had felt after losing his mom to the Gortys bullshit.

Draining his glass, Rhys set it down for a refill. 

“Yeah, I found it. Mission accomplished.”

“So why'd you say that like mission failed?”

“Did I?” Rhys rubbed a hand over his face – the flesh and bone hand, not the robot one. August had so many questions about the robot hand but he didn't like to come across as a total dork. He played it cool. “Just tired, I guess.”

“Sure you want another of these?” August asked, even as he poured liquor into the glass.

“Yes. God yes.” Chin resting in his hand, Rhys looked up at him. “Don't raise your eyebrow like that. You're the bartender, not my mother.” Before August could say anything to that, Rhys slapped his hand over his eyes. “Fuck. Sorry. That was insensitive.”

August rolled his eyes and pushed the drink closer to him. “I wasn't even thinking about her until you apologised.”

“Then sorry for that.” Rhys threw back some of the whiskey, making August _tsk_ at him. Rhys blinked mismatched eyes. “What now?”

“I put the good shit out for you and you drink it like it's rotgut. Thought you Hyperion boys were classy, but I should just put paint-stripper in a glass.”

“I'm not a Hyperion boy,” Rhys said, more solemn and quiet than August could see reason for. “Anyway, I'm paying so what does it matter how I drink it?”

“My profit margin would be better if I gave you the same shit everyone else gets.”

Rhys' grin lit up his face. Looking like that August could almost understand little Vaughn's weird crush. “You give me preferential treatment?” He asked incredulously. He held the glass up and examined the liquid as if he could tell what... oh. Right. ECHO eye. It glowed and light shimmered across the glass. “Wow. Last time someone bought me this they were trying to get into my pants.”

“They _did_ get into your pants,” August reminded him. That had been a wild night for everyone. Rhys wasn't the only member of their little crew to get his end away during that party. “And keep your voice down or everyone will want some.”

“Some of my pants?” The company man asked, face scrunched with confusion.

“No, moron. Some of my finer drinks.”

“Oh. Right.” Rhys took a more refined sip and winked. Then he said loudly, “Ugh, it's like being shot in the mouth with a corrosive gun!”

“For fuck's sake, Ten Mil.”

Rhys laughed, probably more at the nickname than August's annoyance. August wandered around behind the bar, cleaning up. It was a relatively quiet night.

“I should probably head back,” Rhys said eventually, drawing patterns in the little puddles of liquid on the surface of the bar.

“You staying with Vaughn tonight?”

“Nah. Got work to do. LB will take me back to Atlas. The hollowed-out corpse of Atlas.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Oh yeah, it's a dream come true,” Rhys muttered sarcastically.

“So what do you want, if not.... that? I mean, that sort of shit is your speed, right? That's your thing. Corporate stuff. Building a business, doing all your techie stuff, making money and exploiting Pandora. I figured you were one of the few people round here with an actual plan.”

“Hmm. I have a plan. That's true. But I don't think it's...” Rhys sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. I'm talking shit. Ignore me.”

“You don't think it's what?” August asked, curious. “It's not a bad plan, building something out of everything that got broke.”

“Yeah.”

But Rhys wasn't looking at him anymore, he was staring into the distance with a troubled look on his face. Last time August saw him look like that was at the end of a gun.

“You need any help, you know where to find us.”

Rhys laughed, his grave expression vanishing. He finished his drink with two gulps and slid the empty glass over to August for washing. 

“Don't think you guys can provide the kind of help I need, Blondie.”

He paid for his tab then said goodnight, waving bye to Fiona as he ducked out before she could wrangle him into staying with her and Sasha for the night.

When Fiona asked if Rhys seemed okay, August didn't see any reason to say no. She didn't seem reassured though. She seemed so pensive that he almost felt bad for not noticing anything was wrong. But that was Fiona. Always worrying for people who didn't worry for her.

“Thanks for helping us keep an eye on him, anyway,” she said with a smile. “It's appreciated.”

“No problem,” August said with a shrug.

Honestly he hadn't even realised that was what he was doing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the change in tags as a result of certain things in this chapter. The story is primarily intended to be August/Rhys, but there is a darker Jack/Rhys angle being explored as well.
> 
> Also feel free to follow me or talk to me on tumblr. I'm sarkywoman over there as well :)

_“You think you deserve this?”_

_There was no right answer. He kept his face to the pillow._

_Rhys knew in his heart – maybe not his heart – that he had earned every smack. Every laceration. Every bruise. And worse, so much worse. Jack was a creative man. An artist when it came to pain._

_“Got that right, baby. An artist am I. Not Neo-Eden-Renaissance though. Something Modern. With edges.”_

_A scream bloomed from his throat as pain burned at his hip. A real burn. A cigarette? A freshly-fired gun? All were possibilities. They'd all been used before._

_“Nuh-uh, not true. I never left a mark on this pretty...”_

_Big hands gripped the back of Rhys' thighs._

_“Delicate...”_

_His ass was squeezed, a cheek in each of those bruising hands._

_“Flesh.”_

_Pain as teeth bit into his right butt cheek. Jack's jaw clamped down as if he genuinely wanted to take away a chunk of him. When he released Rhys' skin after excruciating moments, it was possible to still feel the indents of his teeth. Jack laughed._

_“At least not where anyone could see. So it doesn't count. Some might say...”_

_He leaned in and ran his wicked tongue up Rhys' neck, up to the neural port on his head which he tongued teasingly._

_“...It's all in your head.”_

_“It counts,” Rhys argued in a breath, lifting his face from the pillow. He turned his head and saw Handsome Jack beside him. Nude and broad, scarred and tattooed. All Rhys had ever really wanted. Under his gaze, the man smiled and reached out to ruffle Rhys' hair._

_“Aw pumpkin. You just want it to count. I don't blame you. But it does say something a little weird about you, don'tcha think?”_

_“I know. I don't care.”_

_Jack's fingers trail down Rhys' spine. Gentle now. He had done this almost from the moment Rhys had met the AI – moved so quickly between soothing and sadism that Rhys got whiplash. But he liked it. So help him, he loved it. The sting of punishment and cruelty made the kindness so much sweeter. When Jack pressed into him with intent to please, it had been hard-won._

_“Sssh. Such a good boy for me.”_

_Rhys shuddered and moaned, pushed back onto the intrusion and gave into it. Again._

_“Do you hear that?”_

_Jack's voice was soft and deep. Teasing. Rhys shook his head. He didn't..._

_He did. He heard it._

_Screams._

_“Look, baby. Helios is burning for you. My clever killer.”_

_Unable to control himself, Rhys looked up at the window._

_Saw them all burn._

Woke with a scream of his own, heart racing. Looked around the room frantically to find himself alone. Looked out the window. No fire. No Helios. That was long done. As was the blue ghost that he expected to see by his bedside. A nightmare, nothing more. A wet dream of madness and murder.

The sheets tangled around his leg as he stumbled from the bed. He fought them off then tripped over his cybernetic arm. He wasn't looking after it as well as he ought to. He remembered back when he first had it, the novelty and the special cleaning tools. The careful reverence he had used when detaching and reattaching it. Now he sometimes forgot to take it off when he went to bed. Took it for granted. 

Like everything else.

Rhys sat down on the bed with the shining black limb and connected it up to his shoulder socket. It felt heavy. Everything felt fucking heavy. As soon as it was active he twisted his palm and checked the time on his display.

Three-and-a-half hours sleep he had managed. That was a record for the month. He put it down to August's steady supply of whiskey. Fancy whiskey, no less. By Pandoran standards Rhys was practically spoiled.

Even that made him scowl to think on. Fuck Pandoran standards. You got your own van and you were royalty in this hellhole. 

His bathroom wasn't the cleanest room in the facility, but the water came through the tap almost clear. A success in itself that hadn't been achieved easily. Still, the novelty of that was wearing off too and Rhys barely even thought about it as he splashed tepid water on his face and took a few gulps of it with his mouth to the tap. His mouth felt dry and gross. He plucked a few pills out of the little box on the side of the sink and washed them down with a few more sips of water. They were the chemical equivalent of sleep. Sleep for the busy man. He had found them scattered all around the facility in first aid kits and he was starting to worry about what he would do when he ran out. Sleep sure as hell wasn't going to happen.

Thirsting for coffee, Rhys got dressed and wandered out of his room after a quick check that his hidden safe was still secure. The hallways were empty. One day that wouldn't be the case. One day there would be workers here, even at strange hours. For now it was just Rhys and a handful of hopeful civilians looking for a chance at building something.

He stepped through the sliding door and a coffee mug smashed into the wall beside him. The pills hadn't kicked in to wake him up yet so he just blinked at the sudden shower of lukewarm liquid.

“Oh. It's you. My apologies, but you _should_ refrain from sneaking up on people in the future. Especially people with beverages in ceramic cups. Styrofoam should be more tolerable, depending on the temperature of the beverage.”

Rhys trudged over to the coffee machine. It was too early to give a fuck. 

“Good morning, Dr Tannis.”

The scientist was utterly mad, but her genius was undeniable. Rhys still wasn't sure how long she had been hiding in the building before he found her. Well, before they bumped into one another unexpectedly and had a huge mutual freak-out. She still insisted that she had at no point been stalking him as her interest in the facility was purely scientific. The fact that she had mentioned watching him sleep was irrelevant, apparently.

At the end of the day, beggars could not be choosers. Rhys couldn't afford to pass up the contributions of a brilliant mind, regardless of how broken it was. Doing so would have been hypocritical, most of all.

“It is indeed a good morning. I think I may finally have cracked the data homing issue you asked me to look into.”

“You have?” After waiting for the machine to finish dispensing the dark nectar of the gods into his mug, Rhys walked over to the table she was seated at. The entire surface was covered with wires, chips, ECHOs and old written code. As soon as he approached the woman held up an arm.

“That is quite close enough, thank you.”

Rolling his eyes, Rhys said, “It's not. I can't see your work.”

“I will be sure to forward the results onto you once I am certain of my success.” Dr Tannis leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips at the tangle of wires she was working with. Rhys noticed they ran all the way across the floor to the wall.

“I'll have to implement health and safety rules once we've got more staff,” he mused, sipping at his hot coffee.

“As long as they don't interfere with scientific advancement,” Dr Tannis said. “Progress is so often the price of ethics.”

“Hyperion agreed,” Rhys said, trying not to think of so many lost lives.

“Please don't say that,” Tannis said quietly, though her focus didn't stray from her work. “I am not a sadist. I like to think I would know if I were.”

“Hey, I used to be Hyperion,” Rhys reminded her. “Am I a sadist?”

“Ha! Are you certain you want me to profile you? I have compiled lengthy reports on your psyche and I would be happy to grant you access to them, though I fear you would find the verdict upsetting.”

“You haven't known me that long,” he said, taking the seat one away from her, leaving space between them to keep her at ease.

“And yet you do not take measures to ensure I don't know you _well_. You certainly have your mysteries, but I am certain I could uncover them easily. If I had any interest in them. Which I do not.”

“Well if that's how you feel I won't tell you where I'm going today,” Rhys said, fighting the childish urge to stick his tongue out. 

“Very well. When you fail to return because some bandits have taken a perverse liking to your well-groomed exterior I will simply inform your friends that you died with your mysteries intact. I am certain they will be pleased to hear it.” She _still_ didn't look away from her work, twisting little metal plates into place with tiny tools.

“Ugh, fine. I'm going to Opportunity.”

“Ah. A pilgrimage?”

“Very funny.”

“Was it?” She stared at him blankly.

“Uh... no.” Rhys shook off the weirdness. “I've been looking for something for a project and so far I've only found bits and pieces. I think Opportunity, although it's more civilian-focused, might have what I need in its entirety.”

“Very well. I shall hold the fort, so to speak. But if you could just confirm that I won't be pestered by our staff. They seem to think they can ask questions of me in your absence. It has caused some minor altercations.” 

“I don't think they're going to bother you until you instigate it,” Rhys said honestly. Once one member of staff lost an ear for an innocent protocol question they all started to note things down for Rhys to address at a later date rather than approach Dr Tannis with queries. 

“Good. That is for the best.”

Rhys left the woman to her work and went to check on his preparations for the journey. He wasn't sure how much he would need to bring back with him from Opportunity, so he was going by truck. The fast-travel stations around the facility and around Opportunity were not totally reliable in recent years anyway. That meant a lengthy and potentially dangerous drive, but Rhys was taking Loaderbot and the truck had three gun turrets. 

Besides, he had been on Pandora for a while now. He carried two guns and some other nasty tricks. He was practically a native. 

The thought soured him as they went on their way, as he looked at bandit camps from a distance and heard the screaming of psychos. He didn't _want_ to be a resident of Pandora, but what choice did he have? Build a rocket and fly back to square one elsewhere in the galaxy? No. Better to do as Vaughn did and adapt to survive. Since Rhys was not at all motivated to become a muscle-man bandit leader, he had to use his other skills. Hack, steal, lie and work his ass off to make some semblance of order on this crazy planet. Without order, no one could really be on top. If he made the order, he would be on top by default. All Vaughn's ex-Hyperion bandit wannabes might have claimed to be pleased about Rhys freeing them from corporate chains, but they would all come running to the familiar. Especially when it was nicer than Hyperion ever was.

“Rhys.”

When Loaderbot said his name Rhys jolted awake, surprised to find he had dozed and the sun was high in the sky. Ahead of them loomed beautiful towers. The city of the future.

“Oh, we're nearly there. Thanks.”

“You were making sounds in your sleep. Are you alright?”

Loaderbot was smarter than many of the robots Rhys had known, but some elements of the human condition still eluded him, thankfully. Rhys had no doubt that the sounds he had been making were pleased ones. Or maybe they weren't. The dreams and nightmares were as bad as each other at this point, seguing seamlessly from erotic fantasy into trauma. Jack would have been thrilled. His legacy continued in Rhys' head.

“I'm fine, LB.”

“It has been requested that I pass on any unusual behavioural or emotional deviations to your peers for analysis. Do you feel that this situation warrants recording?”

Fiona. Or Vaughn. Maybe even Tannis, though her curiosity would have been scientific and defensive in nature. She had been through too much on Pandora to trust anyone quickly. Not to mention his past association with Hyperion seemed to put her on edge. Not everyone thought it was cancelled out by his desertion of Hyperion. Still, it could have been any one of his well-meaning friends that gave Loaderbot the order.

“No, LB. Nothing's happened that warrants sending news back to anyone.”

“Hmm.” A sound altogether too thoughtful for a bucket of bolts, even if he did wear a more slimline armour these days. “What about your choice of destination? Should I transmit that?”

“Keep the coordinates on standby in case of emergency. If we're in trouble you can transmit them to Vaughn with an SOS. Other than that, you keep quiet about today.”

He wondered about the ethics of an AI memory rewrite. LB wasn't human, but sometimes he gave the gang a run for their money when it came to acting human. Fiona had even suggested he was better than human, but Rhys had refuted that. He was just surrounded by bad examples of humanity, that was all.

“You're nervous,” Loaderbot observed as they pulled into the city. It made Rhys' heart ache to see it so abandoned. Jack's vision, unfulfilled. 

“Why would I be nervous?” Rhys asked as he slid out of the vehicle and took a deep breath of fresh air. “Hyperion security are long gone from this place.”

“I meant in regards to the perceptions of your friends. I don't understand why, but it is the only logical explanation for keeping this journey secret.”

“They'll make assumptions. And they'll be wrong. Better not to worry them.”

Hoping Loaderbot would agree, even if he couldn't quite understand, Rhys led him further into the half-finished city. The giant 'H' emblazoned on every tower made him feel something like homesickness. The beautiful portraits of Jack shooting at bandits made him feel even worse. Once upon a time Rhys had been saving his pay in order to get an apartment here. He had wanted a view of the courtyard with these paintings and the statue that had been lasered down some time ago. Now here he was picking through the scraps. Like a bandit. 

“It'll be worth it though,” he said, murmuring it to the painting of Jack like a promise. Jack had laid the foundation for everything. Rhys didn't have to follow his plans, but he could make use of what was left behind. 

Jack's voice rang out across the station, making him jump. An old announcement about worker's rights, or rather their lack of rights. Automated and old, but the sound of Jack's voice still made Rhys' heart race. How could it not after all they had gone through? After all Jack had done to him in the privacy of his own mind?

“Your vital signs are indicating an intense emotional reaction,” Loaderbot said. “Would you like me to locate the source of the audio recordings and terminate them?”

“No,” Rhys said hurriedly. Too hurriedly. He cleared his throat. “I don't want to waste time killing ghosts. Come on.”

He led LB down through shining hallways, past plants genetically modified for permanent bloom. He opened crates that looked interesting, pocketing money and ammo and interesting shields.

“What are we looking for?” Loaderbot asked.

“I'll know when I find it. Just keep an eye out.”

Loaderbot made that thoughtful sound again. It was starting to grate on Rhys' nerves. He settled for ignoring it and brought up his map of the place on his arm display.

“You obtained a map,” LB observed for some reason.

“It's old, from before Jack's death, but the buildings haven't changed.” He glanced out of the large window to his right, at the pile of twisted metal and rubble at the end of a bridge. “Well. Most of them.”

It wasn't difficult to find the research facility. Most Hyperion bases had one and their civilian dream-city was no different. Sure, he knew that the facility would have been filled with horrific human experimentation if Jack had survived, but it was difficult to muster up the disdain with the light glinting from crystal-like towers. Jack had a knack for putting handsome faces on things. 

The door panel was smashed in. Rhys put a hand to his gun and went into the facility slowly, Loaderbot following close by. 

“Probably ransacked by bandits ages ago,” Rhys murmured. “Still, be careful.”

“I will.” 

Not much point in keeping his voice down when his robotic companion failed at volume control. Rhys sighed and gave up on being sneaky, striding through the halls with Loaderbot's heavy footsteps thumping along behind him. Crates were open and empty, doors torn down with the rooms beyond ransacked. Rhys spent over two hours poring through abandoned files and tech, handing things to LB to take back to the truck bit by bit. None of it was what he wanted though.

Not until he reached the locked door. The only room in the facility that hadn't been torn to pieces by opportunists. A room that was listed as Meeting Room J in the floorplan. Initial attempts to hack the lock were unsuccessful. Secondary attempts to hack the lock were equally unsuccessful.

“You're failing because you're tired,” Loaderbot decided when he returned from a trip to the truck and Rhys had lost count of the ways he tried to infiltrate the standalone security system. 

“Shut up. Failure is a stumble on the path to success. I gotta get in this room. You don't lock something up this tight without it being worthwhile.”

“Worthwhile to Hyperion.”

“Well, yeah.”

For a while Loaderbot was silent and the discordant sounds of 'access denied' were the only noise in the corridor. 

“Atlas is supposed to be new. A fresh start.”

“Right,” Rhys agreed. “A fresh start for old things. That's why I'm here. I need stuff for projects. I can't make a company out of dirt. I'm not going back to square one. That would be a waste. That would mean that everything was pointless. I went through too much _bullshit_ for that.”

“You are becoming emotional again.”

“And you're a damn robot. Shut up.” 

The door panel flashed green. The door hissed open. Rhys gasped and fell on his ass before scrambling back to his feet and rushing into the room like a kid on Mercenary Day morning. The room was huge and was clearly _not_ a meeting room, despite one big round table in the corner. There were banks of computers and three huge shipping containers at the end of the room, not to mention a dozen secured weapon crates.

Rhys fired up the nearest computer and started reading frantically while Loaderbot wandered around.

“Why didn't you invite Fiona?”

“I'm busy, LB. We'll chat on the way back.”

“She would have appreciated this. Much of this equipment will be of no interest to you.”

“So shove some in the truck.”

There was a crunch. Rhys glanced over his shoulder and saw Loaderbot had torn open one of the shipping containers.

“Oh,” said the robot, peering inside. “I see.”

In Rhys' pocket there was a remote control he had hoped he wouldn't have to use. He curled his hand around it as he got out of his chair and walked over casually to Loaderbot. “What's in there?”

“I think you know. I understand now.”

“You do?” Rhys reached Loaderbot and looked into the container. His heart pounded. Here it was. Everything he had been looking for.

“Yes.” Loaderbot straightened, dropped the metal door and turned to stare down at him with that glaring red eye. “Your... project... is of concern. I will notify your friends.” There was a faint sound of processing as LB prepared to broadcast back to Vaughn's base.

Rhys pressed the button on the control. Loaderbot jerked.

“I...”

He fell silent, mechanical noises fading away. Then he tipped over, almost landing on Rhys who managed to dart out of the way at the last moment. After the dust settled, Rhys took a deep breath to try and settle himself. He hadn't wanted to do that. Still, it was done now. No time to get all weepy about it. With that in mind, he crouched down and removed the plate on Loaderbot's back. He didn't want to leave his friend permanently out of commission, so he would have to take a few precautions. Hyperion wares were easy enough for him to tamper with and the memory core was an easy fix. Especially since he only needed to delete an hour or so. 

_So cold, pumpkin._

The voice was right at his shoulder and Rhys leapt forward, whirling around with every expectation of seeing Jack's flickering image.

Nothing.

“I'm losing my mind,” Rhys grumbled to himself, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Inside the large shipping container were his spoils, both robot and organic components. Exactly what he'd been looking for. But how would he move the damn thing without Loaderbot? If he rebooted him now, the stupid thing would only freak out again and insist on calling the others. Rhys couldn't let them know. They wouldn't understand.

That meant he couldn't move all of this stuff. Damn. 

Looking around, he spied one of the weapons caches. It was big enough for the most important things and he could probably drag that back to the truck without help. Very slowly, of course. Maybe he could find some drones to tether it to and hack them to drag it back. Either way, it was easier than figuring out a way to move the massive container, so Rhys started to move the best materials from one to another.

Maybe Loaderbot had been right about him being over-tired. Rhys hit a dizzy spell in the midst of his physical exertion and tripped backwards, tugging some cables as he fell. His spine had barely smacked into the metal tiles before an alarm began to sound. 

“Oh _damn_ it!” If Hyperion had any residual security in Opportunity that would be the trigger to call its attention. And Rhys had shut down his only bodyguard.

The first attacker was only an irritating little drone that reminded him of Dumpy. After one miss, Rhys managed to get it with his pistol. But that drone was not the only threat. He could hear the stomping of loaders outside as they tried to manoeuvre through the corridors and the zippy little sounds of the repair drones that followed them. Meanwhile the room was going into shutdown. The giant containers slid back along tracks on the floor into wall compartments that he hadn't noticed before. When those walls slammed down, seemingly impenetrable, Rhys breathed a sigh of relief that he had taken what he needed most. 

He ran to Loaderbot and went to reboot him, but he hadn't finished the memory deletion. That had to be done. He had to cover his tracks. The footsteps of the loaders outside grew nearer. Once one had figured out a path to the security breach they would all follow.

“Come on...” Rhys muttered as Loaderbot's reboot loaded slower than ever before. It was probably a perception thing, caused by adrenaline, but that sure didn't make him feel better about it as the percentage crept from twenty to twenty-one.

Worst of all, his ECHO communicator wasn't broadcasting properly. It was most likely a security measure of the room activated by the shutdown, but that meant that Rhys' only hope of contact would be Loaderbot's integrated communications system which would connect to Hyperion remnants at Vaughn's base.

In a panic, Rhys ran to the internal door controls and hacked into the system. It was much easier this time round. The metal door slammed down and he hoped that would be all he needed to protect him from the various robots and drones closing in on his location. But what else could he do? Loaderbot might have been struggling to reboot due to some oversight, some screwed-up programming from Rhys' meddling. If he didn't get back online soon then Rhys was just trapped here waiting for bots to get through the door.

Unless...

Rhys had left an ECHO receiver somewhere, having been playing at linking it up to his new ECHO eye. It was either back with Vaughn, on Fiona's table, or with Tannis. For the life of him he couldn't remember. 

Tapping commands into his arm to trigger the program, he just hoped the receiver hadn't been abandoned wherever he'd put it. Or thrown away. Or broken. 

“Hello?” He called in a panic. His eye generated the image of brown tiles that he was not sure he recognised. What did Fiona's ceiling look like? 

Wait, he could hear someone at the other end. Voices raised in argument. 

“Hello!?”

The argument stopped.

“Ten Mil? That you in that ECHO?”

Rhys' vision moved with a stomach-churning swoop as the receiver was picked up. Suddenly he could see August as clearly as if the man was in front of him. Behind him was Sasha, the other voice from the argument. Sasha grabbed for the ECHO receiver and August lifted it out of her reach. The movement made him feel sick.

“Guys, stop swinging it around!”

“Whoa, you can see us?” August asked, holding it steady, thankfully. “And you left that here? Kinda creepy, man.”

“It's not like we were doing anything,” Sasha said, folding her arms. “But... yeah. A little creepy.”

“That's what I said!” August snapped.

“Please stop arguing and listen?” Rhys begged. “I'm in trouble.”

That got their attention at least. “What kind of trouble?” August asked, frowning.

“I'm in Opportunity. I triggered some security--”

“Why are you there?!” Sasha cried out. “Who did you take with you? That place is probably crawling with old Hyperion tech!”

“I took Loaderbot but he's down! And...” The high-pitched whine of a laser distracted him. “They're cutting through the doors.” He looked at his worried friends, relieved that the one-way vision meant they couldn't see the panic on his face. “Send help? Please? I'm sorry!”

His vision moved with August as the man grabbed a gun from under the bar and then a second gun that he tossed to Sasha. “On our way. We'll use fast-travel stations as near as they'll go then grab a car from the catch-a-ride. Rhys? You still there?”

He actually sounded concerned. 

“Yeah, I'm here. Just working on something real quick.” He had to switch off the camera so that he could take a step without getting motion sickness from watching August run close-up at the same time. He brought out a cable from his pocket and linked the weapon cache of his stolen treasure up to his neural port. He had to lock it in such a way that only he would be able to open it. If a rescue party was timely, they couldn't be allowed to look inside.

“Is now really the time?” Sasha asked incredulously. “I can hear those laser-cutters. God, Rhys, we'll be as quick as we can but...”

“We'll make it,” August said firmly. 

Which was when the door collapsed in. Of course. Rhys carried on working on his locking program. Just a few seconds...

Rapid mechanical stomping drew his attention. “Oh shit...”

“Rhys, what is it?” Sasha called.

He didn't even move, frozen in fear as the loader ran in with its flashing blue power core on top. Ready to blow. 

“EXP loader.”

He twitched his fingers towards the cable to remove it from his temple but never got the chance. The bot sent out the first warning pulse of energy.

Then exploded.


	3. Chapter 3

Ever since his mom had died in a blaze of badass monster-fighting, her boys wanted August to pick up where she left off. Her army of bandits were currently without a leader and they seemed to think August had first dibs on running the show, as if she had been a Queen or something. It was kind of cool to be offered her legacy, but he just wasn't sure. Honestly, he just wasn't interested. He liked a little excitement but his last attempts to forge his own destiny had led to the whole Gortys mess. He had let Sasha talk him into the vault key crap, then that had led to the Gortys crap and that had led to his mom fighting a vault monster with a rocket launcher. And losing.

He would be _damned_ if he'd let Sasha talk him into anymore bullshit. She was at it again now, excitement on her face as she spoke about all the opportunities running the gang would offer him.

“You're not talking about what's best for me,” August snapped. “You want what's best for you. You always do.”

Sasha only looked slightly affronted. “Well yeah. That's how most people operate. What, you're some selfless paragon of virtue now?”

“No, just... shut up.”

She folded her arms and scowled at him. “That's really charming.”

“I'm not trying to be charming! I'm trying to tell you to back off! Let me live my life.”

“Oh, because you're doing amazing things with it,” she said sarcastically. “Running a bar. Wow. Where's your sense of adventure, August? Where's your ambition? You used to be ambitious.”

He shrugged and turned away from her as if it was suddenly incredibly urgent that he polish the taps. He hated talking about himself in pretty much any way. Debating his life-goals with the woman who had kind of broken his heart was so not something he wanted to do today.

“I learned my lesson from what happened. I'm not smart enough to be planning crimes and shit. I'll leave the criminal scheming up to you and your sister.”

But that didn't seem to deter Sasha. In fact her face lit up. “That's exactly what I'm talking about! You accept leadership next time the gang come round to ask and I'll help you use them as the valuable resource they are!”

August huffed and gave up the charade of polishing the taps, dropping the grimy cloth onto the bar with a _splat_. “Two things. One, they aren't a valuable resource. They're just not. They were guys who weren't crazy but weren't smart, kept in line by my mom. Even then they had this tendency to get stuff wrong or totally screw up promising plans. Two, or uh... the second thing, is that I still don't trust you.”

Rolling her eyes, Sasha groaned, “Oh man, are we still on that?”

“You entered into a relationship with me to get me on board with your plan! That's... so damn low!”

“Well you tried to kill me!”

“And I apologised!”

She threw her arms up. “Unbelievable! I can't--”

_“Hello?”_

They both went quiet. August looked around for the source of the voice, tracing it to the small ECHO pad behind the bar that Rhys had been mucking about with back before his latest trip with Fiona. He'd left it behind and August kept it safe but forgot to give it back. It sounded like Rhys' voice coming from it now.

“Ten Mil? That you in that ECHO?”

Rhys didn't need to confirm it. Once August picked it up his voice was clearer. Definitely him, though he was in a panic. Why the fuck he'd go to Opportunity was anyone's guess. August didn't hesitate to grab an assault rifle then toss a shotgun over to Sasha. He wasn't no hero or nothing, but there was no reason to let Rhys get himself murdered or 'neutralised' or whatever lingo those Hyperion bastards used.

August got out of the bar, taking a second to lock up before jogging down the road to the nearest fast-travel station with Sasha close behind. Rhys was working on something, still talking to them over the ECHO. They could hear lasers cutting near him and the stomping sounds of loaders. Then Rhys swore.

Sasha got the question out first. “Rhys, what is it?”

“EXP loader.”

A beat of silence, then an explosion so loud August dropped the ECHO in the street. 

“NO!” Sasha shrieked.

“Come on!” 

He picked up the ECHO, grabbed her arm and pulled her along but she quickly shook him off and ran ahead. She was already looking over destinations when he caught up. “Highlands. We catch a ride there south to a station that still has an active connection with Opportunity. Fastest way.”

So that was the route they took, but it was painfully slow. Every time they had to move on foot, they ran. Sasha drove their outrunner like a psycho, taking corners on cliff edges with such recklessness that August nearly puked more than once. Still, it got them to the next fast-travel quicker. Sasha leapt out before the vehicle had even stopped, leaving August fearing for his life as it thumped into a wall. The collision knocked the breath out of him, but that was nothing and he was soon at Sasha's side by the fast-travel. She huffed and pushed her hair back from her eyes.

“I swear, first thing Rhys needs to do when we get him back is sort out the broken fast-travel connections. We could have been there by now!”

Saying nothing, August followed her through to Opportunity. He wasn't so convinced Rhys would be in a state to fix anything. Or that they would even get him back. 

The thought bothered him so much more than expected.

“Look at this place,” Sasha said when they got there. She sounded almost breathless with awe. 

August jogged on ahead. “No time for sightseeing!”

She didn't reply, but he heard her light footsteps hurry after him. Spotting some loaders down the right path, he steered down the left then dropped into a crouch behind a barrier. Sasha joined him and for a moment they both stared at the poster of Handsome Jack set up opposite their hiding place.

“Ugh, I hate that smug asshole,” Sasha grumbled. “No idea how Rhys worshipped him.”

“Hyperion's like a brainwashing cult,” August explained. “Probably not entirely his fault. Now how the fuck do we find him?”

Sasha took the ECHO poking out of his pocket. “Any chance there's some setting on this thing? Rhys had it connected to his-- ah-ha!” She held up the display. “Look, it's like a radar! Down that way, I think. If it's right.” She pointed towards one of the smaller buildings.

A loader landed in front of them, feet hitting the ground with such a thud that it was surprising the thing didn't dent the ground. “Hostiles detected.”

They both fired together and the thing was scrap metal in moments. “Go, go!” August ushered her to her feet and they ran. They didn't have the ammo or the time to get into a fight with every security robot. Whenever they noticed a bot they ducked down another path, running past shining skyscrapers and through scenic walkways. To think, Handsome Jack would have turned all of Pandora into this soulless bullshit if he'd had his way.

It took longer than August wanted to reach the building, but soon they were on their guard and sneaking through corridors while Sasha tried to puzzle out the radar. When they found loaders and repair bots littering the floor outside a room with its door blown off the hinges, they knew they were in the right place. They ran in.

There he was sprawled over a weapons cache, smart clothes singed and covered in dust and blood. He still had a cable linking the socket on his head to the cache for some reason, but it was damaged and sparking. 

“Rhys!” Sasha ran to his side and started patting him over. “Is he... oh god, is he...”

“Nah.” First thing August did was put a hand by Rhys' lips to feel the faint puffs of air. “He's breathing. For now. Fuck, Ten Mil, what were you thinking?”

“Should we unplug this? I don't--”

Metallic grinding behind them made them both jump like a pair of skittish skags. August pointed his gun but Sasha pushed it away. “Wait, that's our Loader!”

Oh right. Yeah. Of course, only Rhys' Loaderbot had the outside bit missing. The machine pushed itself up on strong arms, then stood looming over them. He looked between the both of them, then at Rhys' unconscious form. “What occurred?”

“You got knocked out or offline or whatever,” Sasha explained. “Rhys took a serious hit.”

Loaderbot stomped over and cast his luminous red eye over Rhys. “We must get him to a safe place with medical supplies.” He reached down one robotic arm and tugged the cable from Rhys' head.

Rhys screamed, eyes shooting open. Sasha flinched away, August grabbed his arms. The cybernetic one was cold to the touch. Rhys' human arm was warm and wet with blood. “Whoa, whoa, Ten Mil. Easy. Easy.” His ECHO eye was freaking out in a way hard to describe, flashing and twitching. 

“I... EXP Loader... the...” Rhys was frantic and disoriented. The blood sticky across his head was probably a clue for the reason.

“It's okay. You're okay. Me and Sasha are here, your bot-thing's up and running again.”

But Rhys looked up at his robot as if it was another enemy. “I'm sorry... I... what?”

“ _You're okay_ ,” August said again, slow and loud to make it clearer.

“Is he though?” Sasha asked, looking troubled. “He's got a concussion at least and his arm's still bleeding.”

“Okay, let's go.” There was no point sitting around debating it while Rhys bled and whimpered. August scooped him up into his arms and stood up. He was a little heavier than expected, but not too difficult to carry. At least until he started wriggling. “Hey, hold still, we gotta go.”

“No, I need that. I need that. Get it, bring it.” Rhys made a grab for the weapons cache then cried out as he jarred his injured arm.

“Fuck's sake. Loaderbot, can you bring that thing?”

The robot pulled it along like it was nothing while August carried Rhys out of the building. “Sasha, need you to keep an eye out and guns ready. My hands are full.”

“Got it.” 

They were lucky, only encountering one loader and a few weak surveillance bots. Sasha managed to take them all out. Rhys cried out the first time she fired the gun, but he was unconscious by the next encounter. August kept checking he was breathing. When they reached the fast-travel, Loaderbot didn't join them.

“Rhys' cargo will need to join the rest in the truck. I will meet you at The Purple Skag.”

August nodded. There was no time to discuss it. Rhys' blood was dribbling down over August's arms.

This time the journey seemed to take ten times as long, even though Sasha still drove like a crazy person once they picked up a vehicle from the catch-a-ride. Whenever Rhys whimpered August scolded her and told her to slow down.

“We don't have time to take it slow, August!” She snapped back.

A fast-travel jaunt back to Hollow Point and they were almost home.

“How's he holding up?” Sasha asked, peering worriedly at Rhys.

“How the fuck should I know? Neither of us are doctors. I've got some Anshin vials back at the Skag, I'll take him there.”

“Okay, I'm going to tell Fiona. I'll send her to go get Vaughn then I'll come straight back, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He wasn't sure what the little buff accountant could do, but he was Rhys' friend so he should probably be told.

But for all that Fiona, Sasha and Vaughn were Rhys' friends, it was _August_ carrying him to a bed, laying him down and cleaning his wounds. It was August saying, “Hey, hush man, it's okay, hold still,” in his gentlest voice when Rhys woke and panicked. It was August's wrist that Rhys grabbed hold of then refused to let go. When he passed out again the cybernetic hand still didn't release its grip, so that was how his 'real friends' found them when they finally showed up.


	4. Chapter 4

_“Oh princess, what did you_ do _?”_

_It was dark. When Rhys took a tentative step in the pitch-black, broken glass crunched under him. His feet were bare, but it didn't hurt. He stopped. Crouched and ran fingers under the sole of his foot. He could feel the wetness of his blood on the pads of his fingers, but no pain where he touched._

_“I think we're beyond that, Rhysie. Just as well. Once you let it hurt you it won't ever stop. Trust me.”_

_Rhys didn't. Not at all. But he still walked slowly towards the distant blue glow. He had no other beacon, no other direction._

_His chest felt too tight. His head felt too big._

_“What happened?”_

_Jack's laughter rang out all around him, almost deafening. “Oh_ pumpkin _, you don't remember? You were misbehaving. Just how I like it.”_

_And there Jack was, right in front of him bright and blue but solid to the touch. Rhys reached out and pressed his fingers to the man's chest, leaving a dark smudge on his shirt. Jack looked down at it then smiled at him. “Love it when you're bloody, kiddo.”_

_“But... what happened?”_

_Jack grinned. “You don't remember leading them to Opportunity?”_

_Opportunity. Loader-Bot. Pictures of Jack across the walls. Savaged statues. Hidden treasure and fatal security measures._

_“Last bastion of Hyperion. You led them to me. Like such a good boy.”_

_The hand stroking over Rhys' cheek was gentle and affectionate. His skull throbbing and his thoughts confused, Rhys turned into the touch and let Jack pull him closer with a strong hand at the small of his back. It was easy to kiss back when kissed. Easy to be guided to the floor, glass crunching painlessly under his back. All of it habitual, much easier than asking questions or investigating or remembering._

_“My little honey-trap,” Jack purred as he touched him. Unusually tender this time. “You can't even love without drawing blood. We're two peas in a pod, Rhysie.”_

_His head was starting to hurt. “I don't understand.”_

_“Your little friends. The ones who came running to your rescue. Don't pretend you don't remember what happened to them.”_

_Gunfire. Alarms. An explosion._

_“No...” Rhys crawled away from Jack and stumbled to his feet, hissing as the glass cut into his feet. It hurt this time and he stumbled, trying to find somewhere safe to stand._

_“Yes.”_

_Suddenly there was light and Rhys was in the bright room he had found in Opportunity. The EXP Loader had left the place in pieces. Rubble and glass covered the room along with Rhys' bloody footprints. Out of the nearest heap of debris poked August's arm and face. Rhys dropped to his side, cutting his knees as he checked the man's wrist for a pulse._

_“Nope,” said Jack cheerfully. “You're too good at all this murder, princess.”_

_Rhys looked around and saw they were all there. Loader-Bot in pieces. Sasha's vividly coloured clothes torn by gunfire. Fiona so still in the corner. Vaughn staring sightless at the ceiling._

_He staggered back to his feet and stumbled backwards. “Easy there, pumpkin,” Jack warned, reaching for him. His hand went through this time. Rhys continued backing away from the horrors. “Rhys.” There was no ground behind him and he fell._

“Rhys!”

A sharp tug on the cybernetic arm and Rhys found himself falling forward instead of backwards, caught and pulled up against August's strong body. He blinked, confused to find himself upstairs at The Purple Skag. 

“The fuck you doing up, Ten Mil? You're in no state to be wandering around. Almost threw yourself down the damn stairs!” 

Looking back, Rhys could see the staircase a step away. Looking forward, he could see Jack standing with his arms folded. Just like the old days. He was scowling at them.

“Hey, Rhys.” August clicked his fingers impatiently. “You with me?”

“Sorry.” He winced. “My head really hurts.”

August huffed and began guiding Rhys along the corridor with an arm around his shoulders. “No shit. You got yourself exploded. Most people would consider it lucky that you've just got a headache.”

“That was real?”

The way August frowned at him made it clear that was not a question Rhys was expected to ask. “Yeah, it was. I gotta say, you're actually sounding less with it than you did the last time you woke up. Sure hope that doctor lady gets here soon. Come on.”

He guided Rhys into one of the guest rooms that were usually open to rent for the night. The bedding had been rumpled and shoved down to the bottom of the bed. Rhys could see his jacket draped over a chair nearby and realised he must have been sleeping here. He couldn't remember. August helped him into the bed. “You want me to stick around a while?”

In the corner of the room Rhys' weapon cache of treasure sat. He could tell it was his. His neural connector lead hung out of the socket at the end. At least the trip had not been a total waste.

Following his gaze, August looked at the cache. “What's in there, anyway?”

Rhys opened his mouth to speak, but could not think of a plausible lie. The eye contact and the silence soon grew awkward, but before Rhys was compelled to speak there was a knock on the door.

August's attention left him, thankfully. “Yeah?”

“It's us,” replied Vaughn, entering the room with Dr Tannis in tow. She was nervously wringing her hands, gaze darting around. It was cruel of them to drag her out of the base. It was hardly a home, but she was familiar with the place at least. She did not do well with new or different.

“About time. He's worse than he was.”

He couldn't remember being better. Vaughn hurried to the bedside. “Hey bro.” He patted Rhys' hand. “You feeling any better since I saw you?”

“You saw me?” He couldn't remember that either. He looked down to where Vaughn's hand held his and noticed the bandages for the first time. “Did I hurt my arm?” Although he felt totally spaced out, he still saw the look of concern that passed between Vaughn and August. 

“Alright lady,” August said gruffly, stomping over to Tannis. “You'd better--”

“ARGH!” She shrieked and slapped at his chest repeatedly and aggressively with one flailing hand until he staggered back in alarm.

Vaughn cleared his throat. “Um, yeah. You probably shouldn't accost her like that.”

After a minute or so of trying to calm her breathing, Tannis drew a cloth from her pocket and wiped the hand she had been hitting August with. “If everyone would just calm down,” she said, “then maybe I can get to work.”

“You're the one who freaked out,” August grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“A perfectly understandable psychological reaction to hostility from a larger animal,” Tannis replied.

“I'm not an animal! This is my house and if you don't show some respect--”

_“Blah, blah, blah, respect me, pretty please!”_ Jack reappeared sat up by the pillow opposite where Vaughn stood. _“Your rugged bandit protector is a whiny son of a bitch, isn't he?”_ Jack's voice combined with the argument between August and Tannis was making his head pound and Rhys scrunched his eyes shut in pain.

“Guys, stop!” Vaughn cried out. “You're making things worse.”

At that, the room went silent for a moment. 

_“Thank goodness for the tiny bandit king,”_ Jack said sarcastically. _“All hail his abs of peace, love and diplomacy.”_

“You're not here,” Rhys muttered. He had never implanted the ECHO eye back in his head after everything went so wrong. Too dangerous. He kept it safe instead. Until he needed it.

“We are, Rhys,” Vaughn said quietly, misinterpreting him. “August and Sasha came to save you, then me and Fiona came by to visit. You seemed... well, you still seem rough, so I went to get Dr Tannis. Do you think you could check him over?”

That obviously wasn't directed at him. After a moment, Tannis spoke right beside him. Rhys jumped with a gasp, almost bumping heads with her. She was leaning where Jack had been, but he wasn't there anymore. 

“Please, no sudden movements. You know I respond poorly to surprises.” She dropped a small bag onto the bedside table then rummaged around inside. “I want to inspect the neural port first. Then the eye, then the arm. Priorities are important when dealing with a living subject. Brain, sight, limbs.”

Rhys could not stop himself from flinching away when she turned back to him with a long metal rod with cables down the side and some sort of pincer. He looked to Vaughn for reassurance, but even now his bro was no good at masking fear. Even when he said, “Um, I'm sure she'll be gentle,” his wide eyes gave his true feelings away.

“I will be as careful as I can be,” Tannis said. She sighed as Rhys continued to cringe back towards Vaughn. “Rhys, you know I am not in possession of a fantastic bedside manner. I am efficient, however. I intend to make you well. Will you let me?” She folded her arms.

August had wandered closer and now he patted the duvet where it covered Rhys' leg. Even that hurt. “Come on. Let her check you over. You were a freakin' mess when me and Sasha found you. We didn't drag you all the way back here for your cybernetics to get infected or whatever.”

Whether the guilt-trip worked or he had just grown too tired to carry on fighting, Rhys settled back into the pillows and tried to relax. Tannis' hand was cold when it weighed down on his forehead and the wires she pushed into his neural port felt incredibly strange. He couldn't have described it if he tried. It kept bringing other sensations up as well, like nausea. At one point his vision went completely for a terrifying second, then came back clearer. He hadn't even realised his ECHO eye had been at all out of focus until that point. “Pass me that ECHO pad, would you?” Tannis asked.

A few moments later August was placing it in her waiting hand and Tannis frowned at the display. “That is... Well, that cannot be right.”

Jack flickered at the end of the bed. On and off, angry and snarling as he had been in his final moments with Rhys. His mouth was moving like he was speaking a full sentence but Rhys only caught fragments of noise, too brief to understand. 

“But how could it...” Tannis seemed lost in her thoughts, bewildered by whatever readings she was getting. “There seems to be a data bleed between your cybernetics and your brain. That should not really be possible. I doubt it is solely due to the knock you got from the explosion. Most likely you have caused some of this yourself by working on your own cybernetics.” She then addressed August and Vaughn. “It is extremely inadvisable for anyone to augment themselves. That sort of operation should really be left to a team of trained experts in neuroscience, robotics and medicine.”

At the end of the bed, Jack's image fizzled away. Something sparked in his head and Rhys' neck spasmed, his whole head almost wrenching away from Tannis' grip. 

“Try to hold still. Damn. The port should not be this volatile. It does not make any sense. Oh. Bother.”

Not the most comforting thing to hear as he spiralled into unconsciousness.

Waking up was better. Not only was there the reassurance that he had not been killed through medical malpractice, but there was a comforting hand on his middle and a cold cloth on his head. Very soothing. 

“Hey, you waking up?”

August's gruff voice was hushed as if trying not to disturb him. Rhys blinked himself awake to see the man huddled over the side of the bed. Not the caretaker he had imagined, but the role suited him surprisingly well. “I think so.”

“Good. Your crazy doctor set things as straight as she could, but she's got some stuff she wants to look into. Apparently you... fit all this stuff on yourself?” August stared at the cybernetic arm as if it was totally incomprehensible. “How do you even do that? That port on your head, isn't that connected to your brain?”

“Yeah.”

“And you just fixed it up yourself in a mirror?”

“Pretty much.” Screaming and bleeding and fearing he would die brain-dead on a concrete floor in an abandoned Atlas facility.

“Shit, Rhys.” August sounded almost awed. “That's pretty hardcore.”

“I didn't have a choice.” Shrugging made him realise how every muscle ached. “I tore everything out to get rid of Handsome Jack, but I couldn't leave loose cables misfiring. That would have been just as dangerous as mending it badly. Everything seemed fine until the explosion.” Mostly. He could probably put anything else down to the stress and lack of sleep and the post-traumatic stress.

“Well you can stick around here until you're up and running. It's near the girls so they can check in on you and get your weirdly buff little bandit king if needed.”

“Thanks,” Rhys said, surprised at the thoughtfulness. “How much is the room?”

“Don't be a moron, I ain't charging you for it. Just...” August trailed off.

“Just what?”

“Try not to get yourself into that kind of trouble again. We thought – Sasha thought – you were dead. I don't wanna have to go racing out to drag your scrawny ass out of danger again, got it?”

“Got it. I'm sorry. I totally miscalculated on this one.” But he got what he was looking for. It was worth it. “Didn't know you cared so much, August.”

August picked up the cold cloth from Rhys' forehead and dropped it onto his face with a splat. “I just don't want the girls crying all over me.”

“Who's crying?”

Rhys tugged the cloth away from his face and grinned to see his new visitor. “Fiona, hey.”

“Hey yourself, idiot. How do you get yourself into these messes?” She walked over and looked him up and down. His blanket was down to his waist so it was possible to see the ugly, multicoloured bruising all along his body. Rhys wrinkled up his nose at the sight and tugged the blanket up to cover himself. Fiona nodded to August. “Sasha says the Skagsbrau is running dry.”

“Oh yeah. Been meaning to change the barrel. I'll leave you with the patient.”

“Sure thing.” Fiona sat down at the edge of the bed. When August had left the room she sighed and said, “I'd slap you round the head if I didn't think it would cause brain damage. Well, more damage than whatever you've got that made this solo trip to Opportunity seem like a good plan.”

“I took Loader-Bot.”

Fiona pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath in and out as if trying not to shout at him. “That wasn't enough though, was it? And how come you left me out? I bet there's all kinds of sweet loot there.”

“Not really. The place has been picked dry.”

“So what's in the cache?”

“Tech tools,” Rhys said quickly. “Stuff for me and Tannis to mess with once I get it back to Atlas. I did get Loader-Bot to put a few things in the truck for you. Don't know where he's put them.”

That didn't seem to appease her. “Rhys, you're worrying me.”

He tried to laugh it off. “More than usual?”

“Yes!” Rhys flinched back from her sudden temper. 

_“Uh oh, naughty boy Rhysie. Mommy's gonna give you a spanking at this rate!”_

Although he could hear Jack, he could not see him. That was good. Clearly that hallucination had been brought on by whatever head injury he had sustained in the explosion. Fiona clearly couldn't hear him, continuing on as if uninterrupted. “Don't think I haven't noticed how intense your moping's been lately. I thought things would pick up. Not like an insta-fix, but gradually. Instead you seem to be getting gradually worse. And we're friends, aren't we? That means that even if you're infuriating, I worry about you. I mean, there have been moments I've worried and Vaughn has said that actually you're behaving totally in character and you're just weird, but then other times... I think back to the stuff that we spoke about. Back in the Vault. And I get to wondering how quickly we can expect you to shake that off. Or how long it could take for the cracks to start showing.”

“I'm not crazy,” Rhys said, quiet but firm. “I appreciate you're worried, but this was just a mistake. I've been working too hard and I guess my judgement was a little wonky. I won't be making anymore trips for a while.”

“Good. August is willing to let you stay here until you've recovered.” Fiona smiled then. “I think he's getting a soft spot for you.”

“What can I say? I grow on people.”

Fiona laughed. “Yeah, I guess you do. Like a fungal infection.”

“Wouldn't know, never had one,” Rhys replied cheerfully.

His friend stood from the bed and brushed herself down. “Okay, I'm gonna leave you to get some rest. Tannis said it'll take a week or two before you're good to go.” Fiona worried at her lip then, something clearly still on her mind. “She also said... she got a lot of weird readings on you when she was running diagnostics. Stuff in your tech that shouldn't be there. I really don't want to ask this, Rhys, but...” She sighed. “Are you talking to Jack again?”

“I didn't put the ECHO eye back in, if that's what you're asking,” Rhys snapped, making himself sound as affronted as possible. “I'm not stupid.”

“Okay, okay.” She held her hands up. “I'm sorry. I just had to check.”

“Well you checked. You can go now.” He wriggled down deeper into the blankets and turned away from her.

“Don't be like that. Can you blame me for wondering? After what he did to you? You admitted it yourself, you couldn't see sense when it came to Jack. You've been acting so weird and going off alone... When Tannis said she found anomalies, it was the first thing that came to my mind.”

“He's gone. Stop bringing him up.”

Her hand rubbed his back through the duvet. “Sorry. I'll let you sleep. Feel better soon, okay?”

“Thanks.”

She flicked off the light as she went. Rhys half-expected to see a blue glow in the room, but it went completely dark.

But not silent.

_“Time for Dreamland, pumpkin. I can't wait to get my fingers into those bruises.”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It will not update my tags accordingly so please note this chapter contains some sexual content involving Rhys and original characters.

Once a month or so, Vaughn brought his survivalist anti-establishment commune to party at The Purple Skag. Hollow Point tended to get shipments of useful supplies so it was easy for the ex-Hyperion lackeys to mix business and pleasure, trading around the little town before partying the night away. August certainly didn't mind the business. It was nice to see the place crowded, heaving with bodies and too loud to hear himself think. The neighbours knew better than to complain. Most of the locals tended to show up for the party, intrigued by the new and unusual guests. The survivors from Helios were adapting pretty well, but it would take a while longer to totally scrub away that corporate stink. Hollow Point bandits and con artists looked for easy targets while some looked for pretty faces that they wouldn't have normally found on Pandora.

Tector Hodunk's large form pushed through the crowd like a whale moving through fishes. He stomped over to where August was filling a glass with Skagsbrau and lowered Rhys onto a barstool with one hand. Rhys set his black collar straight from where Tector's grip had rumpled it and scowled up at the big man. 

August raised an eyebrow and looked between the two of them.

“What's going on?”

“Your gorilla won't let me leave!” Rhys snapped, his ECHO eye glowing amber as if lit up by his rage.

“Well yeah, you know you're on mandated bed rest, Ten Mil.” August waved Tector away and the giant lumbered back across to the door, knocking dancers aside as he went. Fucking _dancers_. August didn't remember putting the music on loud enough to encourage dancing. 

“I'm absolutely fine,” Rhys insisted, almost shouting to be heard over the din. “I've been here a week now. I have stuff to do!”

“Your doctor lady insisted on it, Fiona and Vaughn back her up. Take it up with them.”

“Last I checked, you ran this place.”

Shoving the drinks down the bar to the waiting customer, August snatched the cash from their hand and came back to Rhys. It was too busy for this bullshit on top of everything else.

“Yeah, I do. Which means I've been here all week, watching you stumble around to get to the bathroom and hearin' you talk to thin air. Bitch and moan all you want, but don't lie to my face. I fucking hate being lied to. You're better than you were, but there's no way you're recovered. Now come on, it's not like they're saying you've gotta stay in bed or nothing. You hang out down here if you want. Half of these people are big fans of yours, right? You destroyed their, uh... corporate chains or something?” He could see them all sneaking glances over at Rhys and gossiping excitedly.

Rhys rolled his eyes. He seemed even more pissy about that, drumming his cybernetic fingers rapidly on the bar as he scowled at nothing. When he started complaining again, August could barely hear him over the noise of the bar.

“Nobody _forced_ them to work for Hyperion. They all signed up the same way I did. If it turned out worse than they expected then most of them only have themselves to blame. The worst thing about Hyperion was the people.” Rhys glanced over his shoulder briefly at the drinking and dancing crowd. “They made that place a social, political and emotional war. They say it was Jack, but they worshipped him. They would have been him in a heartbeat. They only like me because I don't ask them for anything. An absent god is exactly the kind they want.” He turned to August and visibly shook off the maudlin thoughts. “Can I get a drink at least?”

“Sure. You have to serve yourself though. Just transfer credits through for what you take. I'm busy here.”

“Right. Can't imagine how much it would suck if you wanted to get on with your work and your friends were getting in the way,” Rhys said sarcastically. Whatever. He'd be bitching if they let him go off on his own and he got a fever or something. He put on a good show, but Rhys was only just getting better after a week of weird fits and torn stitches.

Rhys climbed off the stool and squeezed past the patrons to get behind the bar. August got on with serving his customers. Hell of a night for Sasha not to show – he really could have used an extra pair of hands.

Still, he didn't run a successful business through whining. He earned his way through hard work and violent intimidation. Tonight took more of the latter than usual. Despite supposedly being humbled by their new beginnings on Pandora, many of them still had a streak of Hyperion that showed after a few drinks. Entitlement, superiority, greed, all of it showing in the way they ordered their drinks and the way they tried to mock him. He just had to keep thinking of the money.

When he saw feet heading up the stairs out of the corner of his eye, August was ready to start kicking people out. Nobody had paid for a room yet, though they certainly would as the night wore on. Then he recognised the shoes. Ten Mil's damn awful shoes, followed by a dusty pair of boots as some bandit thug followed him up. 

For a moment August thought he would have to crack out his bat and go save Rhys from a mugging. Then Rhys' hand reached down and tugged at the bandit's leather jacket, pulling him up the stairs behind him. The company was clearly wanted.

Well. That was... fine. Rhys was a grown man. They all knew his preferences. He could do what he wanted. Why wouldn't he?

“Hey, is that mine?”

The voice nearby drew him out of his thoughts and reminded him of the pint glass under the tap that was flooding with Skagsbrau. “Ah, shit.”

He grabbed it from the tray, drink sloshing all over the sides, and shoved it at the customer. The guy took it and stared at him as if waiting for something else.

“Scram!” August snapped.

After the customer darted off into the crowd he realised the guy had meant to pay for his drink, which was apparently on the house now. Damn it. He kept looking up at the staircase where Rhys had disappeared off with his bit of rough. Was he recovered enough to be doing that kind of crap? Wrapping those long legs around some douchebag's waist? What if the fucker was rough with him? He was still injured and emotionally fragile and shit.

“Baaaaarrrkeeeeep,” someone droned behind him. “Hey baaaaarrrrkeeeeep! Dude with blond hair who serves drinks! Please serve drinks!”

“Your paying customers demand it!” Someone else said with a laugh.

August whirled around and grabbed one of the morons by the throat and slammed their head down onto the bar, right into a puddle of booze. “Well I demand you _shut up_!”

His buddy fled the bar with a shriek. The rest of the customers crowding around the bar stared at August with wide eyes. He took a deep breath. Let go of the moron, who collapsed to the floor. 

“Right, who's next?” Everyone just stared. “For a drink, I mean.”

They began pushing and elbowing to get as close to him as possible without actually climbing onto the bar. August rolled his sleeves up and got serving. 

Hard work made the time fly, cliché as that was. He let it distract him because whenever he paused for a minute he found himself thinking of Rhys upstairs. It fucking bugged him and he didn't know why. When Fiona offered to cover the bar to give him a break, August turned her down. He wanted to be taking cash and pouring drinks and talking back to assholes who thought being customers somehow made them smarter than him. It was better and more lucrative than standing around thinking.

When the weirdly-buff little bandit king rolled up to the bar, he looked as bored and frazzled as August felt. For a moment he thought about offering Vaughn a drink on the house, but while he was thinking about it Vaughn laid his money down on the bar. August took it and passed him the little glass of liquor he had been serving him all evening. It was getting quieter in the bar, which could only be a good thing at this point.

“You look as cheerful as I feel,” August said, inadvertently breaking his rule about building rapport with customers. He kinda knew Vaughn though so that was different.

Vaughn sighed. “It's Rhys. He's being an idiot.”

“Right. With that bandit?”

The little man huffed out a bitter laugh. “I wouldn't call Luke a bandit. It's like he's barely noticed we're not on Helios anymore.”

“Guy I saw looked bandity. Leather boots and jacket, big guy...”

“Oh, that was the first one. Luke's the one who just went up.”

August blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I think it's some sort of slutty protest,” Vaughn grumbled. “Like, we're keeping him here so he's going to act out until we let him go. He's so immature sometimes it makes my blood boil.”

“He's taken another guy up there?” August asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the stairs.

“Yeah. The other one left first, of course, but... hey, where are you going?”

He barked at Fiona to watch the bar as he grabbed the banister and swung himself round onto the stairs. He took the steps two at a time then strode across the creaking floorboards and shoved Rhys' door open. Whatever bugged him about thinking of Rhys sleeping with that bandit was multiplied by a hundred at the sight of him on his knees, a cock slipping from his lips as he turned to see the source of the noise.

“August, what the fu--”

“YOU! OUT!”

When 'Luke' hesitated, August grabbed the collar of his shitty shirt and heaved the man off the bed, shoving him towards the door. When the guy turned to complain that he was pantsless, August already had the jeans off the floor and was throwing them hard at his head.

“Ow!”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BAR!”

The douche stumbled out of the bedroom pantsless leaving August with Rhys, who was glaring up at him even as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. 

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Rhys snapped, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet.

“That's my line, Rhys. What are _you_ doing acting like the bar whore? This isn't that kind of place!”

Rhys' eyebrows went high. “Not that kind of place? Wow, I didn't realise I was ruining the reputation of your classy, upmarket establishment. Guess I'll show myself out.”

As he took a step away, August grabbed his arm. The human one, not the robo-arm. He could almost fit his whole hand around it, Rhys was so scrawny. “You're staying right here.”

“This is _imprisonment_!” Rhys said, almost shrieking, shaking his arm away.

“No, it's friendship!” August shouted back. “Or something! I don't fucking know! All I know is you're not well and I want you to be well so I'm telling you to get your ass in that bed and lay down! I'll bring you water.”

Rhys looked at him like he had gone absolutely insane. “What even is this? You're my caretaker now? You?” He sounded incredulous, like August couldn't possibly look after anyone. It hurt.

“Why not me? I'm not a bad guy.”

“You tried to shoot your girlfriend.”

“She started it!”

“And you're keeping me locked up in your shithole bar!”

“On doctor's orders! Because I'm your friend! You need to be resting, not fucking your way around my clientele!”

“You are such...” Rhys closed his eyes and frowned. He shook his head a little and opened his eyes to glare at August again. “You're such a...” He hesitated. “Okay. You know what? Lucky for you, I am tired and I am going to go to bed.” His voice was shaky. August reached out to support him and Rhys shook him off. “I got it. Get out.”

August waited until he had watched Rhys lay down, then let himself out of the room, closing the door behind him. 

“Is he okay?” 

Sasha was waiting in the corridor for him, leaning on the wall with her arms folded. Finally showed up, just as the bar was quietening down. It figured.

“Think so. Not sure. Maybe I should call his doctor lady friend.”

“I think she shortens her name to Tannis,” Sasha said with a wry smile. She pushed herself off the wall and walked with him to the top of the stairs. “You really worry about him.”

“Don't we all?” Everyone always seemed to be theorising about Rhys' behaviour and checking up on him. 

“Well, he needs it,” Sasha said with a shrug. “It's good to see you like this again though.”

“What, kicking creeps out of the bar and arguing with people?”

“Being protective,” she explained. “It was the best thing about you when we were... you know. Until you found out I lied.”

“Shouldn't lie about loving someone,” August said. 

“Yeah. I get that. But let's not have that conversation again. I'm tired of it and so are you.”

It was hard to guess what she was getting at. August hazarded a worried guess. “Look, I think there's no point in trying to fix us. I thought there might be, at one point...”

“Oh god, no.” Sasha shook her head. “No. I totally agree. There is _no_ fixing how things turned out between us. None. I'm surprised we're even friends, to be honest. With the whole Rhys thing, you're being pretty clear. Don't worry about that.”

“You lost me.”

“I figured. It's cool. Really, really, honestly cool.”

“No, I mean with what you're saying. You lost me. What do you mean I'm being clear about the 'Rhys thing'?”

She stared at him. “Seriously? You just dragged a guy out of his room screaming and you think you're being subtle?”

“Subtle? About what?”

For a long while Sasha just stared at him. Then she shook her head with a sigh and began to head down the stairs. “I don't believe you. I really try to tell myself you're not that dumb, August. Can you really not see how you're behaving here? What that suggests about you and Rhys?”

“Seriously, Sash,” August said, following her down the stairs, “I've no fucking clue what you're talking about.”

“You're treating Rhys like you want--” She stopped. “Hey, isn't that your old gang?”

August had already spotted them, chilling at a table in the corner. Minus Finch and Kroger, it was the old crew. They were already watching him. Even though they had been into The Purple Skag to drink before, there was a tension in them that suggested they were here for something else this time.

“Don't say anything about joining them for another heist,” August cautioned Sasha. “In fact, you go stand at the bar, hang out with your sister.” 

She didn't argue, but didn't go either. She just stood there halfway down the stairs. August could feel her eyes on him as he walked over to the gang. He dragged a stool over, thankful that the party had mostly died down now. One of the goons, Stee, nodded to him, his chemically-treated platinum hair catching the light. “August.”

“Stee.” He looked around the others. Lorel. Carson. Varjen. Whelp. And Natalia, who was only around because she was dating... damn. He couldn't remember which of them it was.

“Haven't heard from you,” Lorel said, picking his nails with his knife while he watched August with steady eyes.

“Been busy. Running a business, y'know.”

“Oh Mr High And Mighty,” Whelp whined sarcastically. “He has a _business_. So amazing. If your business is worth it, how come you gotta work yourself into the ground to break even? There are better ways to make money, my friend.”

“I've been thinking it over.” It was weird, they looked genuinely hopeful when he said that. “It's not for me anymore. I can't go back to it. My place is here at the Skag. It's humble, sure, but it's me.”

“Your mother would weep,” Varjen said in his customary low rumble before draining his drink. 

“Sure she would, if she could. But she can't. She got killed pursuing the next big job. One that _I_ got her involved in. You'll do fine without me, guys.”

He got up to leave, but Natalia's quiet voice stopped him. “Don't make out like this is anything but a selfish decision. You're abandoning us for your new friends.”

“Bitch killed Kroger,” Carson said, nodding over at the bar where Fiona was calling last orders.

“We could overlook that,” Stee said reasonably. “If you were still one of us, of course. If not then, well... we'd have to look at payback. Hat-girl, your psycho ex, buff bandit king-wannabe, Atlas boy...”

August slammed his fist down on the table, knocking over Varjen's empty glass. “If you think threatening me is gonna make me fall in line, think again. I might not have mom's ambition, but I'm still her god damn son. Finish your drinks and get out.”

He got up and made his way over to the bar. Fiona and Sasha were getting everything cleaned up now. Well, as clean as it got at the Skag. “I'll give you both a cut,” he said.

Sasha's eyes lit up. “You're taking a job with them?”

“No, I mean a cut of tonight's takings. Your sister gets more since she actually made herself useful.” Sasha stuck her tongue out at him. “I told those guys to get out. Keep an eye on them. Call me if there's trouble.”

Fiona eyed them warily and nodded. “Okay.” Then she snapped her attention back to him. “Wait, where are you going?”

“Gonna check on Rhys. He was a bit off.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Fiona muttered to herself.

Leaving them to clean up and close up, August made his way upstairs. Rhys was already sleeping, shirt folded neatly on the bedside table, trousers draped over the end of the bed. August settled into the armchair near the bed and watched him for a while. He seemed to be breathing fine and sleeping peacefully enough. There was probably no need to stick around. Maybe they were being a little over-cautious. He just couldn't stand the feeling he'd got when they found him in Opportunity, bashed, bruised and bleeding. A guy like Rhys was supposed to be fancy suits and shoes, sleek tech and a ten million dollar grin. Not dust and blood and tears.

He didn't mean to fall asleep there, but the next thing he knew he was jolted awake in the dark by a sound. In the neon light coming through the window from the place across the road, Rhys was twisting and turning in the blankets.

“I don't... please...” 

August reached out and shook his arm. “Rhys.”

“Jack!” Rhys shot upright, scaring the crap out of August. His ECHO eye scanned the room randomly until Rhys blinked and shook his head. “Crap. Crap. Sorry.”

“Bad dream?”

“Uh... yeah. I guess.”

No need to guess what it was about, given the outburst. August leaned forward and rubbed Rhys' bare shoulder. His skin was warm from being tucked under the blanket, but thankfully not fever-hot for the past few days. “Must have been hell, having Handsome Jack in your head.”

“Wish it was that simple. But, you know, you don't earn a personality cult by having no redeemable qualities or charisma. Jack was bad news. But he had a way of feeling like good news.” Rhys rubbed his eyes sleepily. “He was persuasive. In my dreams he still is. He was able to get into my head while I slept. Some fluke in the connection from Nakayama's drive. I'd see him and talk to him during the day and he'd seem no more than a hologram but in the night, when I dreamt... he was as solid as your hand is right now.”

“And you're still seeing that?”

“They're just dreams,” Rhys said. He looked way more miserable about it than he should have. “Confusing and upsetting dreams. But hey, I'm a big boy, I'll get over it. Sorry about before, by the way. I was acting like an ass.”

“S'okay. I was thinking maybe you're right. We can't just keep you here. Your doctor lady can keep an eye on you at Atlas anyway, right?”

Rhys nodded. “Sure. Her bedside manner won't be nearly as comforting as yours though, you big cuddly bear.”

August made a sound of disgust and drew his hand back. He got up and headed to the door. Time to sleep in an actual bed. Rhys laughed. “Yeah, you laugh it up. You'll be missing this when you're back in Atlas.”

“Maybe I will,” Rhys said, before August left the room.

It didn't stop him, though. The next morning Rhys rose early and summoned Loader-Bot to help move his secured private cargo onto a truck. August offered to accompany them on the journey back, but Rhys wanted to do it on his own. Well, aside from Loader-Bot. So August loaned him a gun and watched them drive off before getting on with chores around the Skag. 

The ex-Hyperion survivalist commune had all gone, leaving the place peaceful for the miserable regulars. August got everything restocked, balanced the books and spent the evening reading a weapons magazine while serving a couple of old guys at the bar.

“I'd have thought you would be at the job,” said old Hank, who liked to suck on used barmats. 

“What job?”

“Oh, you know, with the gang.”

“I'm not running with them anymore,” August explained, flicking over the page of his magazine to examine a double-page feature on a new Torgue rocket launcher. Not really his thing. Mom would have loved it.

“That's a shame. It sounds like this Atlas gig is going to be very lucrative for them. They were saying it's all unguarded technology.”

August's stomach dropped to his feet. “What did you say?”

Hank stopped staring at one of the beer-soaked barmats and met August's eyes. “Just what I heard, son. The old crew have gathered all the local bandits and they're bound for New Atlas.”

“When?!”

“Hmm, I saw some of the lads head off early afternoon.”

“FUCK!”

He should have kept Rhys locked in the damn bedroom.


	6. Chapter 6

_“I could have dealt with this by now if you had just given me a chance.”_

Despite the gunfire and yelling, Jack's voice came through crystal clear. Further proof to Rhys that he was just an auditory hallucination. “I got this,” he muttered anyway as he worked on connecting wires beneath a floor panel.

“If you have, I would recommend doing something faster,” said Tannis. She was huddled under the desk with him while he worked and bandits shot up the facility. Not quite the relaxing homecoming Rhys had hoped for. 

“I'm working as fast as I can,” he snapped. “It's more than you're doing.”

“Don't be so sure,” Tannis replied with a smile. She held up a small device that looked like a remote control. “I am simply biding my time. I am hopeful we will not need to resort to such drastic measures.”

Rhys didn't even ask, just got on with his own efforts. Anything Tannis considered a drastic measure certainly had to be left as the absolute last resort. 

Finally all the connections were sorted and he was able to flip the switches to send power through the system. Laser turrets fired up around the compound and began firing at everyone without an Atlas identification.

“Hopefully our few staff remembered to wear their badges today,” Tannis said conversationally while the nearby bandits shouted obscenities and tried to escape the turrets. 

“Oh man, I hope so.” It wasn't something they were insistent on. The security systems had been a latter item on a long list of things to fix up. “We'll have to do a headcount afterwards.”

_“Murdering your own staff, pumpkin? You do me proud.”_

“Are you alright? You look pained.”

“It's fine.”

For a while they both sit there, curled up under the desk as the bandits face off against the security systems. It was hard to tell who was winning. Rhys thought he heard one of them scream loud enough to indicate a mortal wound.

Then footsteps hammered nearer, rapid and heavy. He thought of the EXP-loader that had almost killed him and shrunk further back under the metal desk. But it was a human that shoved the desk aside and grabbed him by the throat. Some big guy with long dirty hair and muscles on his muscles. He flung Rhys across the floor then aimed a shotgun at him with one hand while Tannis made panicked sounds in the background.

“Turn it off, Atlas!”

From where he'd been thrown, Rhys could see one of the bandits was bleeding out on the ground. The others had taken cover behind pillars and worktables, ducking out occasionally to take a shot at the lasers. Only this big lummox had been brave or stupid enough to make it over to Rhys and Tannis' laser blind-spot. 

“I'm not really sure I can. It's not like a switch that I can – whoa, okay, gun in my face, there's a gun in my face!” Rhys crawled backwards along the floor as the barrel of the shotgun followed.

“If you can't stop it you're disposable,” said Big Scary. “So again – turn it off.” Behind him Tannis started jabbing the buttons on her device in a panic. 

“But if I turn it off I'm disposable too,” Rhys pointed out. 

The big guy thought about this. “Oh yeah.” He huffed and jabbed Rhys sharply in the forehead with the gun.

“Ow!”

“Just do it and stop making it complicated, Atlas.”

At that point a catch-a-ride vehicle smashed through the beautiful glass wall, destroying numerous irreplacable technical units. It bounced through the large room and one bandit was slow to evade the large wheels, making a crunching, squishing sound beneath it. Lasers blasted at the car but it flew straight past them, skidding past Rhys, Tannis and the big bandit. It was so close Rhys could have sworn he felt it brush his hair. 

“Ten Mil,” August's voice said from within the vehicle, “Stay down.”

He sagged back onto the ground as flat as he could. Gun turrets fired over him, blasting the big bandit away. Rhys lay there a little longer for good measure, until August was standing over him.

“You can get up now.” The man reached down and pulled him to his feet. Such strong arms.

_“Don't make me fucking sick, Rhysie. One bandit's same as another. Stop swooning.”_

“Thanks, August. How did you know what was happening?”

“Someone let slip at the Skag. Your brawny little bro and his cult are clearing up the stragglers outside. You hurt?”

“No. Thanks to you. I mean, I had it mostly under control, but... yeah.”

August seemed almost embarrassed by that, looking away and rubbing the back of his head with his hand. “Yeah, well... you know, you guys did better than I expected with all your lasers and shit. You probably didn't need us at all.”

As Rhys opened his mouth to respond, a loud roar echoed from somewhere in the facility. Tannis cleared her throat. “I released something I have been working on.” She waved her little remote control. “To protect us. I suppose that will no longer be necessary.” She managed a small facial twitch that might have been intended as a smile. “Someone will need to deal with that.”

She looked at Rhys. He looked at August.

The man sighed deeply and hefted his gun up onto his shoulder. “Fine. But someone had better make some snacks for when I'm done. I missed dinner for this heroic shit.”

He went off to tackle the beast from the depths of Atlas while Rhys searched for the kitchen.

Later on, August and Vaughn and the small cult of neo-bandits ate their way through half of the food stores, telling grand tales of the monster they had slain while Tannis mourned the loss of her work. Well, August didn't really boast. It wasn't his style. But he was quick to slap down those who were boasting, laying down truth bombs of how deadly it wasn't. Rhys couldn't help but believe that he was playing down the whole encounter, that perhaps he was just more badass than the others who had fought it alongside him.

And after that, when Vaughn had received his obligatory bro-hug and was ready to leave, August asked to stick around for the night. Just in case they were attacked. 

Then he stayed the next night. The whole week, in fact. He took the room next to Rhys' and came to hover around while he was working. He asked questions that Rhys didn't want to answer about his project. Nothing too insightful. August wasn't exactly technically-inclined. Still, the sensitive ethical nature of Rhys' project made him increasingly irritated with the interruptions. Not to mention Jack wouldn't shut up about it. 

_“He's got it in for us, cupcake. He'll tell the others and undo all your hard work. Are you gonna let that happen?”_

Eventually he snapped.

“Is there a reason you're still hanging around?” He asked August one day in the lab, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

August stared at him for long enough that Rhys started to feel a little bit guilty. He had not slept well, tormented by dreams of Jack and clearly it had taken a toll on his temper. He opened his mouth to apologise but August spoke first.

“You need a bodyguard? Like, on your staff? I'd take a wage from you to work as a hired gun. This place is vulnerable as hell.”

_“Oh no. No way, princess. You tell him to get back to his bandit hovel.”_

Rhys waved Jack away distractedly. August's eyes followed his hand, a slight frown on his face. Rhys powered through, though the offer flummoxed him. “I... well, sure. That makes sense. But um, what about the Skag?”

“Fiona and Sasha have it sorted. I can always check back with 'em. It's a bar, not a baby. I don't need to be there all the time.”

“Well...”

_“I SAID NO!”_

“You okay?”

He had flinched at Jack's glitching shriek. Now Rhys forced himself to smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. It's a good idea. I'll tell Tannis.”

They shook hands like it was a business deal, but it didn't feel professional. It felt personal and actually gave Rhys the warm fuzzies. August wanted to look out for them. For him. 

_“What, and I don't?!”_

“Cool,” Rhys said, ignoring Jack despite what it would cost later. “We'll get you access to the weapons store and stuff. In the meantime, I really have to work on this. I'm near a breakthrough, so could we maybe catch up at dinner?”

August looked at him funny. “What time do you think it is, Rhys?”

“Uh...”

_“What's his deal? It's three p.m.”_

“Three p.m?”

His new bodyguard nodded towards the wall panel with environmental stats. The little timer said... 

“Three. I told you three.”

“A.m. It's three in the morning, Ten Mil. How long you planning to be working? You've been in here since yesterday morning.”

“It's an important project,” Rhys said, turning away. “I do this all the time.”

“Yeah, Tannis said. You need sleep.”

“I'll get some.” Rhys flashed his winning smile. “Promise.”

His promise was met with narrow-eyed suspicion. August stepped up close to him, well within personal space boundaries, and looked him up and down. “You do?”

“Uh-huh. Pinky swear.”

Then the man's lips were on his own. August's stubble grazed at Rhys' soft skin, sending a shiver of lust right through him. His tongue was aggressive but two could play at that game.

_“Whoa! WHAT THE FUCK RHYSIE!?”_

Rhys drew back. Couldn't meet August's eyes. “Um, wow. Yeah. So... dinner then?”

August chuckled. It was a good sound that Rhys did not hear nearly enough. “Brunch. I'll see you at brunch. Don't forget to sleep.”

When August left the lab and the door slid shut, Jack flickered back into visibility. He had been cropping up increasingly lately, a visual hallucination to accompany the auditory. Rhys tried to ignore him, but it was difficult in moments like this, when Jack stood as imposing as any of his posters with his arms folded and murder in his eyes.

_“Forget sleep, baby. You have work to do.”_

Plucking another pill from the case in his pocket, Rhys nodded before he swallowed it down. That would keep him awake a few more hours at least. “I know. Don't worry, I won't...” He huffed. “You're not here. Just shush and let me work.”

He got back to programming the cybernetics. Soon they would be fully integrated with the empty doppelganger body he had acquired from Opportunity. 

“When I've got you back you can berate me all you want, Jack.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that there is always a delay between chapters. My mental health is poor and without going into details, a couple of setbacks - professional and romantic - haven't helped.

So there was typical Rhys crazy, then there was whatever August was seeing now. 

Working for fifty hours straight. Not wanting to talk about it. Snapping when called on it. Locking people out of his workshop. Blocking Tannis' access to areas of the network. Talking to himself. Flinching at nothing. Gesturing at nothing. 

“Hey, Ten Mil. Tannis wants to do another check-up.”

Rhys narrowed his eyes at him. He was currently sitting at his workstation going through lines of weird symbols and numbers. Code and shit. 

“I'm a little busy.”

“When aren't you?”

“Never. So I guess we'll have to skip it.”

“Come on, Rhys.” August sat on the desk by the keyboard, nudging aside four empty coffee cups. “You're not yourself.”

“Like you would know.”

“I've spoken to your bro Vaughn and he's concerned. Fiona's pretty freaked. She thinks...” He trailed off. Fiona had brought up what had gone on back during their little road trip for Gortys. Talking to himself and acting fidgety, those were behaviours they had noticed before realising Rhys was carrying Jack in his head.

“She thinks Handsome Jack is back pulling my strings,” Rhys said, raising an eyebrow. It was a damn good look on him, but August didn't want to get distracted.

“Yeah. So just let Tannis check you out to--”

Rhys slammed his robo-hand down on the desk so hard the surface splintered. “Why won't people just _leave me alone_?! I have so much to do.”

“So let Tannis help. She's dying of curiosity about your project.”

“I don't need help, I need space.”

Well, never let it be said that August couldn't take a hint. He eased himself off of the desk with a sigh. He had only taken a couple of steps before Rhys tugged at his arm. He glanced over his shoulder. “What, you want me to get you a coffee or something?” Dude was going to have a heart attack at this rate.

“No, I...” Rhys swallowed, his previous temper tantrum gone. “I'm sorry.”

August went back into his personal space and rubbed a hand over and behind Rhys' human shoulder. The muscles were tensed up solid under his palm. “What's going on, Rhys?”

He looked exhausted, even as he shook his head and refused to explain. “Everything's fine. Just... you're being so awesome and I'm being a total dick. I can see myself doing it and I want to stop and just be with you for a bit, but...”

Kisses always worked to stop him in his tracks, so August planted one on him again. When he drew back and Rhys was still angling his lips up for more, August tugged at his arm slightly to coax him from his seat. “Come on then. Be with me. Nothin's gonna fall apart in the next hour.”

Rhys worried at his lower lip like he wanted to argue, but clearly even he had his limits when it came to work. He smiled weakly and took August's hand, letting himself be led out of the workshop. Rhys' room was nearer, so August went there. As soon as the door clunked shut behind them, he put his hands all over the scrawny nerd that had no right to make him this crazy. He got his hands up under Rhys' shirt, one dancing fingers up his spine and one caressing his side. Here and there he felt the marks of Pandora – little scars from bandit scuffles and the Opportunity explosion.

After a few moments of not playing, Rhys let his hands do some walking too. His warm human hand slid to the small of August's back while they kissed. When August pressed his hips forward, Rhys' robo-arm grabbed a handful of his jacket.

Breaking the kiss, August growled, “I wanna take you to bed. That cool?”

For some reason Rhys moaned low at that. Then he grinned sheepishly. “That's the sexiest way anyone's phrased it to me before. You're so damn badass.”

“Hey, by Pandoran standards that was some fuckin' chivalrous courtship I just gave you.”

“Believe me, I know.” Rhys let go of him and walked to the bed, working on the buttons of his shirt. “That's why you're going to get what you asked for.”

Maybe it had taken August a long time to figure out what he wanted, but watching Rhys strip for him made the desire hit him like explosive ammo. By the time Rhys was crawling naked onto the bed, ass swaying temptingly at him, August was hard as a rock and wrestling with his belt to get out of his clothes as quick as possible.

He felt Rhys' eyes on him like his gaze was a physical touch, stroking up and down his body. Once he was naked August stood near the bed a moment and shrugged. He had nothing to be ashamed of, though he didn't know how Hyperions rated their conquests. “Like what you see?”

“Oh yeah.” Rhys reached down and started to stroke himself. “I always had a type.”

August climbed onto the bed. “Is that why your bro was so desperate to bulk up?”

“Ugh, don't. That conversation will ruin the mood.”

“You mean this mood?”

Ten Mil's neck was soft and unmarked by the trials of Pandora. Even after days of non-stop working his skin was sweet to August's tongue. You didn't get guys like this on Pandora. Rhys was rare as a vault key. August explored with tongue and teeth; Rhys clearly enjoyed a little rough. He writhed and moaned, hands clutching at August's ass to push their cocks together.

They used some random lube for mechanical stuff that Rhys found on his desk and for some reason he apologised for it. August was used to not using lube at all, so he wasn't complaining. 

_So_ not complaining. Rhys' long legs wrapped around his middle made it feel like Mercenary Day. August couldn't stop staring at the blissed-out expressions on his face. 

“So fuckin' tight, Ten Mil. Here I thought you were well-practised.”

Rhys laughed, but it turned to a gasp as August thrust in right. “Calling me a slut? So romantic.”

He wanted to say it didn't bother him really, that Pandora had totally different standards and shit, but firstly, he didn't want to talk, he wanted to fuck and secondly it _did_ bother him now. It bothered him a hell of a lot to think of Rhys with another dude. 

“Doesn't matter. Mine now.”

There wasn't anymore talking after that. Rhys stared up into his eyes and that prompted August to start kissing his face all around the cybernetic eye and port. So damn unique.

They moved together for a while, sometimes with biting and almost violent thrusts and grasping, sometimes slowing down to make it all sweet-like. It was during one of the slower moments that Rhys got off, coming with a cry. His robo-hand crunched the wooden bedpost as he shuddered under August's body. August didn't play around after that, hurrying to his own finish and grunting with satisfaction as he came. He settled on Rhys' body for a moment, getting his breath back, then pulled out and rolled onto his side. Rhys shifted up the bed into a sitting position.

August looked up at him and reached up to tug him down. Some sleep would do him good.

But Rhys swatted his hand away. “I'm sorry. I...” He shook his head.

“Hey. Rhys, look at me.” He didn't like the way Rhys was staring across the room. “Rhys.”

“Shouldn't have done this.” Rhys' voice was low and panicked, like some sort of repercussions were already on their way. 

“Why the fuck not?” August sat up to hold him but Rhys clambered out of the bed, long limbs everywhere. He immediately starting grabbing his clothes off the floor. 

“This was a bad idea. Not your fault, my fault, but still. Bad.”

“Will you get back in this bed?” August snapped, more worried than annoyed. Rhys still sounded like he was barely holding in some sort of meltdown. “We'll talk about it.”

Already dressed, albeit roughly, Rhys stood tall and ran a hand back through his hair as if to tidy it. “No. That's not happening. This can't happen again. It shouldn't have happened then.”

“ _Again_ , why the fuck not?”

Rhys' eyes darted to the left. August followed the gaze – nothing there. “Rhys...”

“You should go. And I don't mean like, to another room, I mean back to the Purple Skag. I don't know what you want from me. If it was a fuck, then great, we're done. I haven't got anything else for you so... yeah. Thanks for dropping by.” With a weird wave of his hand, Rhys turned and strode out of the room in his dorky socks.

August lay back down on the bed and huffed. He didn't understand what was going on with Rhys, but he wasn't about to be ushered out of Atlas over it. If Rhys wanted him out of his bed after letting him in, he was going to have to damn well explain himself.

He gave it a little time, had a little doze and let Rhys calm down. Then he got himself dressed, strapped his gun on and went looking for the crazy bastard.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhh, let me know if there are any fuck-ups in this chapter. I wrote the last page in a fit of restlessness and I'm too impatient to give it the once-over I usually do instead of thorough beta-ing.
> 
> Also I should mention I am taking drabble requests atm over at my tumblr - http://sarkywoman.tumblr.com/

Rhys could barely work. His hands were shaking, his heart was racing, tears kept welling up in his eyes and blurring his vision. Still he kept at his task, double and triple-checking his programming and apologising all the while.

“Please, I... Please, Jack.”

_“Please what, Pumpkin?”_ Jack flickered in and out of existence, scowling with his arms folded. Ever since the accident on Opportunity he hadn't been able to stick around properly. Sometimes only his voice manifested. 

Wait, had he been clearer before that? In dreams, sure, but other than that... Rhys couldn't remember. He rubbed a hand over his eyes. Exhaustion was dragging him down.

_“Don't you dare pass out on me. You don't get to destroy me then spend all your energy fucking bandits until you're too tired to put me back! Work!”_

“Everything's almost ready,” Rhys mumbled. He stumbled over to the safe. He had relocated it to this lab from his bedroom as the project advanced and now he trembled as he unlocked it and drew out the little ECHO eye implant. He held it up to Jack. “Once this data's transferred over...” He fell silent, looking at the little implant resting on his palm. “I don't get how you're here.”

_“You just couldn't live without me, that's how. Get working. Get me back. Now, Rhysie.”_

“Get you back,” Rhys echoed. He wandered to the doppelgänger body, trying to work his way through a mess of confusing thought. “But you're here.” He looked at the glitching blue hologram, then at the implant in his hand. “How are you there and here? Standing in front of me but trapped in this implant? I don't...” He closed his eyes, frowning against a headache. “I'm hallucinating. You're a hallucination. Fuck, I keep forgetting.”

_“I won't be once you get everything up and running. Then I'll be real enough to touch. Real enough to give my cupcake what he really needs.”_ Jack's voice was suddenly very close. When Rhys opened his eyes, the madman was close enough to kiss. It put him in mind of a hundred filthy, wonderful and terrible dreams. _“Unless you wanna carry on dragging that nice guy down with ya. How about it, kiddo? Should I hang back while you fuck him up?”_

“No. No, leave August out of it. He's dealt with enough.” Better if he left, went back to the Purple Skag and left Rhys and Jack to ruin each other. 

God, the thought of that shouldn't have made him shiver with anticipation. Rhys put it out of his mind and went to the desk, preparing the transfer equipment. His hands were still shaking and one wrong move could end everything. For a moment he saw himself back on the Atlas concrete floor with a scalpel and laser, trying to fix the damage he had done to his cybernetics, trembling and puking and fearing every tremor would burn through his brain.

_“I'm waiting, Pumpkin. Hurry up.”_

“I can't,” Rhys almost wept. “I'm sorry. I'm tired and weak and...” He slid down with his back against the table, scared of what Jack might do in the face of this pathetic display. He fumbled in his pocket for the pill bottle, but when he pulled it out he found it empty.

Jack sighed. _“Rhysie. Baby. Don't I always look out for you?”_ He came to crouch in front of Rhys, down on one knee so that their eyes were level. _“If you can't, that's okay. I have another idea that could work temporarily.”_

“You do?” 

_“Sure. Hook that implant up to yourself for a moment. I'll take over and finish the job here.”_

“You mean like...” Rhys met Jack's gaze. Alarm bells rang faintly at his honeyed tones, but they were muffled by the fog of sleeplessness and despair. “Oh, no. I couldn't, no. No, no.”

_“Why not? I've looked after your body before.”_ Jack waggled his eyebrows. 

“That was different.”

_“Yeah, because this time you've got a better body for me waiting right there. Come on, you think I'd rather stick with your wet noodle of a bod? Those doppelgängers were modelled on the most handsome man in the Universe. Just let me borrow you to get the work done.”_

“You won't be more than a few minutes?”

Jack stood and looked over the desk, computer and doppelgänger body. _“Wouldn't have thought so. Looks like you've done most of the hard work. I'll reward that, you know. When I'm back.”_

That promise was the clincher. Rhys brought the ECHO implant up to his eye and tentatively connected it to his system.

Everything went blue. Then dark.

Then the laughter started. It sounded synthetic, like a scrambled signal, until gradually it cleared up into a broadcast of Handsome Jack's mania. 

_“Rhys. Ohhh, Rhys. You stupid, perfect boy. Couldn't live without me, huh? Should have known._

It felt like paralysis, like Jack having control of his arm multiplied by a thousand. Rhys could still feel, but barely. When he moved, it was without intent. Jack was moving him, walking over to the metallic wall and staring at the distorted reflection. His ECHO eye was lit up amber. Rhys hoped his friends remembered what that meant.

_“Sssh up there. You don't have to worry about anything anymore, pumpkin.”_ Jack ran Rhys' hands over his own body, only to startle at the cybernetic arm. He looked at it, twisting it this way and that. He chuckled again in Rhys' voice. Would anyone be able to tell the difference? Thoughts of the gang flashed through his mind unasked for. They might just think he had gone mad, locked in his lab too long. _“Man, you've really been fucked up these past months, haven't you, kitten? You weren't made to be alone, Rhysie.”_

“Ten Mil?”

Oh no. “Don't hurt him,” Rhys pleaded in his own head. “Please. Just send him away.”

In the metallic wall, his reflection arched an eyebrow. _“Begging, kiddo? Who is this guy?”_ Rhys saw his own face frown before an even greater sense of nausea and disorientation swept over him. Events from the past few months flicked through his mind like he was browsing a gallery.

It dawned on him slowly that was exactly what Jack was doing. Catching up. Because he hadn't been there. Not really. Not until Rhys had stuck him back into his implants.

_“Wow.”_ Jack laughed uproariously. _“You...”_ For a moment he couldn't get the words out for laughter. _“You've been hallucinating me! Aww pumpkin. Should have known better than to try and live without--”_

“Hey.” Jack turned to the greeting and Rhys watched as if from a distance as August walked in. 

_“You're still here? Thought I asked you to scram.”_

August frowned and Rhys hoped it meant he had heard a difference in his voice, some giveaway that this wasn't really him. “Well sure, but you didn't say why.”

_“What, I gotta explain everything now? Newsflash, you're a bandit. Explaining the workings of this genius brain to you would take the rest of both our lives.”_

“Rhys, are you okay?” That was suspicion. Oh thank god, that was definitely suspicion.

_“I'm fine! Now get gone so I can get back to work!”_

But August wouldn't, of course. For some reason he had started to give a damn and he was too bull-headed to let Rhys scare him off. He walked closer. “Rhys...”

When he got close enough to kiss, Jack grabbed the gun from August's hip and jabbed him with it. _“There's just no helping some people. I was_ trying _to show Rhys my merciful side.”_

For a moment August just looked shocked and maybe a little hurt. Then he seemed to hit a realisation. Little delayed, but hey, Pandoran. “Jack.”

_“Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Your prize is immediate death.”_

“NO!” Rhys screamed. For a moment he could feel his arm – the cybernetic one. He swung it up and grabbed his flesh-and-bone wrist, just in time to send Jack's shot wide. August darted forward.

Suddenly he was on the floor. He hadn't felt himself fall. August was pinning him. Had he lost time? “You give him back to me, you son of a bitch,” August was growling.

_“Or what? You'll kill us both?”_ Jack laughed. _“Yeah right. Give it up, you know I'm the one he wants, bandit.”_

Jack grabbed August's throat with the cybernetic arm and dragged him down to the floor, switching their places. Rhys tried to take over the arm again but he didn't know how he had managed it the first time. He felt utterly paralysed, unable to do anything but watch as Jack strangled August beneath him.

_“He_ gave _me this body. He's helplessly in love with me. He'll let me do whatever I want, just like before. And when I've got everything in place and I move onto my new, better body?”_ Jack leaned down to whisper in August's ear. _“I'll take him to bed and throttle the life out of his pretty little neck. And he'll LET ME.”_

August roared and shoved up at him. 

Things went dark again after that. It was like viewing snapshots of the fight from a distance. Every time Rhys regained consciousness he and August seemed to be in a different position. Sometimes Jack had the upper hand, sometimes August. Rhys wondered if his inability to remain conscious suggested he wouldn't last long in whatever mental limbo Jack had shoved him into. After all, he wasn't an AI. His mind wasn't supposed to lay dormant in his own body. 

Another lapse in consciousness and he was on his back looking up at August. There were better ways to experience this view, he thought sadly. August had his gun back, aiming right at Rhys' face. Rhys felt oddly detached from it all now. Probably something to do with hormones and brain chemistry. Maybe he was just dying.

_“Fucking DO IT!”_ Jack cackled like a maniac with Rhys' voice. _“Prove me right! See, I told Rhysie. I told him bandits couldn't love. They fuck and they kill and they die at my hand. So which is it going to be?”_

Rhys felt a sensation in his cybernetic arm. He tried to look down but couldn't control his own eyes. His fingers curled around something. Jack had found something on the ground. Some tool or weapon. August didn't know. He was going to be stabbed in the gut by Rhys' arm.

“Just let him talk to me,” August pleaded. “If he says this is what he wants, I... I'll let him go. I'll leave. Just let him talk to me.”

For a moment nothing was said. “Please, Jack?” Rhys asked. Well, thought pointedly at him. However it worked.

Jack sighed. _“Rhys wants to talk to you too.”_

As August's eyes widened and he lowered his gun, Jack stuck him in the gut with a shard of broken glass. Rhys screamed.

_“The kid's never known what's good for him though.”_

Shoving August's bleeding body away, Jack stood and made as if to walk away. Rhys was not letting that happen. No fucking way. He wasn't leaving August to bleed out alone on a lab floor. He reached back, straining his arm to try and touch the man.

_“Hey! Give me that arm!”_ Jack snapped.

It was hard to explain the struggle that followed. It wasn't a test of physical strength, which was just as well. It was more like reconnecting nerves or regaining blood, urging feeling back into a numb limb. Walking on pins and needles because there was something he needed to do. It didn't hurt, but it felt eerily like he was turning himself inside-out. He gained a leg and staggered a step closer to August's groaning body. 

_“Oh no you don't, kitten!”_ Every time Jack surged against him, he shattered Rhys' progress. Everything went numb. _“You're not going back to being a bandit bicycle. You're property of Hyperion--”_

“Atlas, actually,” said Tannis from the doorway. She smiled awkwardly. “I am dreadfully sorry Rhys. I have every intention of not killing you, but... well.” She pressed a few buttons on a remote that looked like an ECHO pad. A horrendously high-pitched sound grew louder and higher. Some sort of interference?

Distracted by Tannis, Rhys completely lost control of his body to Jack and only realised it when he was suddenly running forward at the scientist.

Tannis squeaked in fear and jabbed a button.

Everything went dark.

Jack went silent.


	9. Chapter 9

Rhys spent too much time unconscious. 

“It's a lifestyle choice,” Fiona quipped, but it fell flat. She sat opposite August with the bed between them, her feet up on the bed as she leaned back in her chair. She had fallen asleep for a while. August loved her a little more for visiting Rhys so much. 

They all had, of course. Vaughn could never stay long. He kept crying, clutching Rhys' hand and whispering “Why, bro?”

It was a good question. “Why?” August squeezed Rhys' hand. He only had the human one at the moment. All cybernetics had been removed carefully by Tannis, who had scanned and quarantined them. Jack was very much alive in there.

“Because Jack told him to,” Fiona responded, even though August hadn't been asking her. “Case closed.”

“But...” August shook his head and went back to scowling at Rhys. If the dumb bastard hadn't gone and got himself in a coma, August would have punched him the fuck out. “We...” He shut his mouth again. He didn't want to go on about his tragic love life to his ex's sister.

“Tannis said you two were intimate,” Fiona said. Whenever he glanced up, she was watching him as closely as he watched Rhys.

“How the fuck does Tannis know?”

Fiona looked up towards the ceiling-mounted camera in the corner of the room. “You really want to think about it?”

“Ugh. She creeps me the fuck out.”

“She has her quirks,” Fiona said with a smirk. “But she has her uses.” She looked pointedly at August's middle, where a bandage covered up a wound that had almost healed into a spectacular scar. 

“Yeah, alright. But I'd have appreciated a little more effort on making sure Rhys didn't end up a vegetable.”

“We don't know how he'll be yet. He could be fine.”

“Fine? It's been over a _week_ and he hasn't opened his eyes. Even if he's coherent we don't know if Jack's gone.”

“With all the implants removed--”

“Rhys was seeing and hearing him before he put that eye back in. I know he was.” He hadn't wanted to believe it when the others suggested it, but in hindsight there was no other way to explain the jittery behaviour.

“No, he wasn't,” Fiona said firmly. “Didn't you understand what Tannis told us?”

“Guess not. Dumb-ass bandit over here.”

“Oh, knock it off,” Fiona snapped. Clearly she was losing patience with his self-pity. “Tannis noticed a data-bleed after the Opportunity accident. Now we know what that was. Processing information or something left behind by the AI Jack in Rhys' neural port. Nothing sentient or even conscious or complicated. Just... scraps of data. It got scrambled into his brain and left him seeing Jack again. It was probably going on since he fixed up his own cybernetics. You're really not supposed to do that, apparently.”

“He's a hardcore little stringbean,” August said quietly, squeezing Rhys' hand again. 

“He is,” Fiona said with a nod. “I've seen him take enough injuries to know he'll be awake and whining in no time.”

“But...” He still didn't get it. “How come he couldn't tell it wasn't really Jack? I mean, he must have known he was hallucinating. Or do you not know when you're hallucinating? Like, I've only hallucinated after two bottles of really badly-brewed liquor. I figure it's different when you're sober.”

For a while Fiona was unusually quiet. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth, frowning at Rhys. People were supposed to look peaceful in a coma, but there was a slight furrow in Rhys' brow that left him looking upset even though he was unconscious.

“Rhys wasn't in love with Jack.”

August barked out a laugh that surprised himself. “Don't bullshit me, Fiona. No benefit in conning me now.”

“I mean it,” she insisted, glaring at him. “He thinks he was. We talked a lot when we were stranded together. We talked like we've never talked to anyone. I told him stuff even Sasha doesn't know and he told me stuff even his bro Vaughn doesn't know. And I'm telling you now, Rhys wasn't in love with Jack. He had a fanboy's crush on him, then he was obsessed with him, then he got Stockholm Syndrome and survivor's guilt and a brain injury. He was plagued by erotic nightmares and he kept telling himself they were dreams.” Fiona sighed. “He kept telling me he swore he heard his voice. But it was just trauma. Mostly. I told him so then. I didn't think it would get so bad.”

“Well I think if Jack asked to kill him, Rhys would sit still and let him.” The taunting of that dead scumbag still haunted August's thoughts. It had been the truth, every twisted word of it.

“Probably,” Fiona agreed. “But does that sound like love to you? Sounds more like a serial killer's suicide pact to me. August, I'm not saying Rhys wasn't totally messed up for Jack, because he was. I'm saying that it wasn't love. Jack never made him happy. Never. And he never would. The fact that Rhys seemingly didn't give a shit about that doesn't suddenly make it into some kind of romance.” She huffed. “Now can we quit with this heart-to-heart?”

“Gladly.”

“I might get a coffee actually,” she said, rising from her seat. “You want anything?”

“Nah. I'm good.” As soon as she walked out of the door, Rhys opened his eyes. August jumped out of his seat, not thinking about how it would pull at his stitches. “Ow, fuck!”

“You okay?” Rhys asked, his gaze going straight to August's middle. Clearly he remembered the stabbing. His eye looked so strange without the implant. Tannis had put in a sort of plug to prevent infection of the socket, but it still looked like his eye was missing its middle.

“I'm fine. You? I mean, what the fuck Ten Mil? How long have you been awake?”

Rhys cringed away. “A couple of minutes?” His voice was croaky as hell. To be expected, probably. 

“Why didn't you say anything?!”

“I _really_ didn't want to take part in that conversation. Fiona was airing all my dirty laundry.” Rhys winced. “My throat hurts. My head aches too. And my arm is...” He looked down his side. “...gone, apparently. Still hurts.”

“Fiona was right about the whining,” August said, not knowing what else to say. He stepped away, planning on fetching Tannis. But Rhys grabbed his arm.

“Wait, I stabbed you. Are you really okay?”

August sat back on the edge of the bed and cupped Rhys' face in his hand. “No you didn't. _Jack_ stabbed me.”

“And I didn't stop him,” Rhys said, looking utterly miserable.

“Could you?”

“It wasn't possible!” Rhys cried out, voice scratchy and painful-sounding when he hit a higher pitch. “I don't know how I gained control at any point, it didn't make any sense, I tried so hard...”

“Then it's fine.” August shrugged. “I'll be alright anyway. Tannis got me all sorted.”

Rhys settled back onto the pillows and relaxed at that. “Okay.” He reached up with his remaining hand and pressed his fingers tentatively to the bandage on his forehead. “Did she remove everything?”

“Had to. All your robo-bits were contaminated. Jack was like this full-body infection and we had to get him out.” It was difficult to ignore how upset Rhys looked, knowing he probably wasn't only mourning the loss of the implants. “Sorry.”

“No, no...” Rhys stopped poking at his bandage and grabbed August's hand. “You don't have to apologise. In fact, I demand you stop it. I... god, August, I'm so, _so_ sorry. I could have killed you.” His good eye watered. “I just... I was...” He shook his head, couldn't find the words. 

August leaned closer and pulled him up into a hug. “Hey, it's okay.”

“It's not,” Rhys sobbed into his chest. “It's so not. It never was. Fiona's right and do you know how much I hate saying that? I worshipped him and then... Once you've put that much into someone, you can't just... I couldn't just... I mean, I'm as bad as him anyway, you should have just left us to—”

Grabbing him by the shoulders, August pushed Rhys back enough to look him in the eyes. “You are _not_ as bad as him. You shut that up right now.”

“Do you know how many people I've killed?” Rhys asked in a whisper.

“You know how many I've killed?” August shrugged. “Welcome to Pandora, Rhys. There's a difference between what you did and what he did. You're not a sadist.”

“I'm no better than him,” Rhys said quietly.

“So try harder.” Rhys blinked at the blunt command. August leaned back in his chair. “What? You want me to coddle you some more? It is what it is, Rhys. No undoing what's been done. I guarantee you though, this isn't a conversation Jack ever had with anyone. He did what he did and he kept on going until he had to be put in the ground. Like a monster. There weren't people around to cry for him. He didn't have anyone because of what he did and who he hurt. Y'know, everyone.”

Honestly August didn't know shit about Handsome Jack, but it was easy enough to take some hearsay and run with it. It sure seemed to give Rhys pause for thought.

Reaching out, August wrapped Rhys' hand between his own. “But I'm here for you, Ten Mil. Because you're not like that. You've had a shitty time, just like the rest of us. It honed your edges and left you in the right time and place to do some damage. But when you've got options? And time? I know you won't go out of your way to hurt anybody. We all make mistakes.”

“I killed--”

“Yeah, yeah and I took a shot at Sasha. Sometimes our mistakes are fucking huge. Not much to do about it other than try and do better in the future. Right?”

Rhys smiled. “You're trying really hard at this.”

“Is it working?”

“Kinda.”

“Cool.”

Maybe he should have gone to get Tannis at that point, but it seemed like the perfect make-out moment. Rhys certainly didn't complain when August leaned in and took his lips.

A throat cleared in the doorway, making August jump. Fiona was there smirking with Tannis frowning behind her.

“I hardly think that's an appropriate first action to take when someone wakes up from a prolonged period of unconsciousness.” Tannis strode over and began shining a light in Rhys' good eye. “You should have called me immediately. I have a number of checks to perform.”

“We'll leave you to it,” Fiona said. “August, got a minute?”

“Don't leave m—urrrpphh!” Rhys' plea was interrupted by Tannis shoving some sort of medical tool into his mouth.

“I'll be right back,”August promised, before he followed Fiona out. As much as he wanted to stay with Rhys, he would be in okay hands with Tannis. “What's going on?”

She led him down the hall to one of the labs. “Tannis has narrowed down the infection back to just the ECHO eye. She's isolated it. We were just coming to talk to you about it. Rhys waking up... that complicates things.”

As soon as he followed her through the lab door he saw what she meant. Handsome Jack flickered in and out of existence, a blue hologram projected from the ECHO eye hooked up to various computers. 

_“Oh look who it isssszzz. Rhy-y-ysie's bandit boy-- boy-- toy.”_

He was glitching, his words occasionally fizzing with static. 

“Better than Rhys' recurring nightmare,” Fiona responded to the ghost, folding her arms and glaring at Handsome Jack.

_“I can't wait until he bringsszzz me back-ack-ack. I'll feed you that hat.”_

“So what did you wanna say to me about it?” August asked, turning slightly so that Jack wasn't directly in his field of vision.

“Isn't it obvious? We were wondering what to do about him.”

_“Givvvvvve me to Rhys. He'll know what to d-d-d-do.”_

Fiona flapped a hand in Jack's direction as if doing it might quiet him down. “Obviously that's not an option. Tannis thinks he could prove useful for research.”

“Is she telling Rhys now?”

_“My pumpkin's awake? That's good. T-tell him I'm waiting. He'll know what to do.”_

“She agreed we needed to figure out how to broach the subject first. But I'm worried, August. Rhys's track record for doing the wrong thing when it comes to Jack... it's not good. It takes a lot for him to say no. Even after everything that happened, he held onto the ECHO eye. He kept Jack alive and looked for a way to make him _more_ alive. I don't know if we can risk keeping the eye for any reason, scientific or sentimental.”

“We can't.”

_“I think that's a decissszzion for Rhysie, don't you? Come on, bandit. Don't you respect his choices or some soppy shit like that?”_

August walked over to the computers where the ECHO eye was suspended above the table, connected by various wires to the projection system.

“Hey, you said it yourself. Rhys doesn't know what's good for him.”

He drew his gun.

_“WAIT!”_

August put a bullet through the ECHO eye at point-blank range. Handsome Jack vanished. 

Once the echo of the gunshot faded, the lab was silent but for the quiet hum of Tannis' computer.

Fiona sighed. “We'll have to tell him, you know.”

“Then we'll tell him. I did the right thing.”

“Are you sure?”

The look in her eyes made him hesitate. Rhys was going to be devastated. He was going to be furious that August took the decision out of his hands. It was a murder, in a way. He was going to cry and he was going to make August leave and honestly, he'd probably be right to never speak to him again.

But the alternative was to hand him the drug that would kill him.

“I'm sure.”

“Then I won't tell him.”

After her declaration, Fiona held his gaze for a long time.

“What?! I don't... Fuck's sake, I don't get any of you people. At all. Like, sure, it sounds good and maybe there's some logic to it but I'll be damned if I can figure out--”

She put her hand over his mouth. “August, shut up and go back to Rhys.”

That made sense, at least.

 

**Six Months Later**

 

It felt weird not to be serving the drinks at the fancy shindig. A recycled Loaderbot stopped beside him and lowered a tray of drinks to him, but August waved it away. He wasn't drinking while he was on-duty. 

Not that he was ever off-duty these days. Atlas was growing every day, creating new opportunities but also new threats, external and internal. As Rhys' bodyguard, August finds himself constantly fighting monsters and bandits and keeping an eye out for more subtle threats.

Like that Maliwan guy who kept getting more drinks to share with Rhys. He was flirting outrageously and Rhys was playing along with it, laughing as though he'd never heard anything so funny. August knew they wanted to befriend Maliwan representatives at this point – it was the whole reason for the party – but it made his skin crawl. It was all so... corporate. Of course, Rhys was in his element. He scrubbed up well, looking smart in his black ensemble. Maliwan man certainly seemed to think so, drinking Rhys in with every greedy look. 

August continued his slow wander around the room, subtly checking out the guests for any sign of mischief or mayhem. He had been stopping by Rhys on each circuit of the room so far, just to tell him everything was still cool, but as he neared the group this time the Maliwan douche reached out and slid a hand around to the small of Rhys' back. Rhys smiled in a way that August really thought was for him alone. 

So he meant to pass by without a comment this time, but Rhys grabbed his arm. “Hey.”

“Hey?”

The Maliwan rep was clearly surprised by Rhys' wavering attention too, looking at August as if to say, 'who do you think you are?'

“Walk me back to my room? I think we're done here.”

Rhys stepped neatly away from the man's hand on his back then shook it. “Hopefully we'll get a chance to talk before you leave tomorrow. If not, drop me a line to let me know what your bosses think of the proposal.”

“Uh, sure. Of course.”

August tried very hard to get the smirk off his face as he followed Rhys out of the large conservatory area they had fancied up for the party. Rhys wasn't quite walking in a straight line, so clearly those drinks had some effect. As soon as they were out of the door, August took his hand and led the way to their bedroom. Once they were inside, Rhys sighed and wiped his hand across his brow.

“You know when you're like, on the precipice of having too much to drink?”

“But you can still say 'precipice'?”

Rhys laughed at least as loud as he had at Maliwan rep. “Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that. Go me!”

He was unbuttoning his shirt so August peeled off his own. He had only just yanked his top over his head and dropped it to the ground when he had an armful of Rhys. Rhys kissed along his neck then nuzzled him. “Want you. You looked so good tonight, walking around all bad-ass, looking for threats.”

August found Rhys' belt and started loosening it. “Here I thought you wanted Mr Maliwan.”

Rhys laughed again. “Nuh-uh. Just business, baby. Networking.”

“Netflirting.”

“Oh god, I've changed my mind. Don't want you. Awful.”

“Tough shit, Ten Mil. You got me.”

August hefted him onto the bed, tugging off his trousers then climbing on top of him. Rhys rarely wore underwear, so his cock was out and hardening. Before Rhys, August had only blown a guy once and he hadn't liked it. He still didn't like sucking dick as much as Rhys clearly did, but he'd had a lot more practise now and he liked the pathetic, needy little noises Rhys made when August did this for him.

Rhys didn't let him do it for long, winding his human fingers through August's hair and tugging lightly.

“Fuck, August, I'm close. Stop.”

August drew his mouth back from Rhys' cock with one more lick, just to watch him shiver. He started lubing up his fingers. “Already? You get off on flirting with jackasses in front of me?”

He expected a denial, but Rhys chuckled. “Maybe?”

“Ohh, that does it, Rhys. I'm gonna wreck you.”

“Mmm, promises, promis-ah!”

Less than an hour later, the two were dozing against one another, Rhys thoroughly ruined as promised. His face pressed to August's chest he murmured, “I like making you jealous.”

“Yeah? I think it's a pretty douche move. You actually sleep with someone else and I might just kill them.”

“I know. You're super-protective. It's cute.”

“Wasn't going for cute,” August grumbled. “I was aiming for kinda threatening?”

“It's protective. Trust me. I ever sleep with a douchebag while we're together, you have license to kill.”

“Rhys. You know I'm just messing with you. I wouldn't murder a guy to keep him away from you.”

Rhys pushed himself up on his elbows to look down at August in the dim light cast from his computers on the other side of the room. For too long he didn't say anything at all. Then he smiled. “You did.”

He knew. August had never found the courage to tell him, but someone clearly had. He didn't know what to say. 

“It's okay.” Rhys leaned down and kissed him tenderly. “Look at where we are. I couldn't have done it without you. I wouldn't have done it with Jack. He was my self-destruct button and you took it away.”

August didn't know what expression he had on his face, but Rhys seemed determined to kiss it away. He didn't know what to say. Rhys seemed to have him all figured out on this one.

“Well, y'know... I love you, Ten Mil. I wasn't gonna let... yeah.”

Rhys lay back down, closing his eyes as he used August's chest as a pillow. 

“Love you too.”


End file.
